


...But We've Barely Learned To Crawl

by commoncomitatus



Category: Earth 2 (TV 1994)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag for "The Man Who Fell To Earth (Two)", spanning the length of the episode.  In which death is an old friend, wisdom is not the same as intelligence, and a little faith goes a long way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Her father used to say, _“Death is like an old friend.”_

Back on Earth, that meant he was selfish. It meant he had no choice, because selfishness was survival. That’s what friendship was on Earth: survival and selfishness, taking someone else’s meal so you wouldn’t starve, and not even Death was exempt from that. He needed souls, and the planet was teeming with them, dying and dwindling and ripe for the taking; he couldn’t afford to think about the families left behind any more than those families could afford to think about the hungry mouths that someone else couldn’t feed.

Being a friend on Earth meant being selfish. It meant surviving, and sometimes that meant stealing something that someone else needed. But it also meant being selfless. It meant accepting the selfishness of others, and knowing that it was only survival that birthed it, not malice or cruelty. Friends stole from their friends because they would die if they didn’t, and their friends pretended not to see because life was worth more than pride. On one day, a friend might steal a loaf of bread from his neighbour, and on another he might close his eyes while that same neighbour stole a cup of water. That was how friendship worked on Earth, and it was how Death worked too.

Death was a terrifying thing to a child, a nightmare to a little girl afraid of the darkness that all but made up the entire world. Death was a stranger, a threat whispered from the shadows… but to a grown man wracked by a fourth day of fever or a fifth with a festering wound, he was a friend indeed. He didn’t seem so selfish, then; to a dying man his presence felt like relief. Even terrified children knew that that terrible things could taste sweet as sugar after something worse. Death was like every other friend down in those dark tunnels: selfish on one day and selfless the next. Sometimes he stole a soul to keep himself alive, and sometimes he offered comfort where nobody else could.

Earth was a harsh place. Her father told her that all the time, usually laced with an apology. He felt guilty, she knew, and that made her feel guilty too. He was always trying to make the world into something better, always trying to make her see something more than what was there. It never worked, of course, because she was a child and the world was made of stone and they were both as immoveable as each other, but still he tried just the same. Every day, though he must have realised it was futile, he tried, because he was her father and that was what fathers did. He tried to make her see things the way he did, tried to twist their heartless reality into something a little softer, a little sweeter, a little less cruel. He tried so hard to turn a lightless world into a home where a little girl could thrive, and he tried so hard to turn a lifeless little girl into a creature that could thrive in a world without light. He tried so hard, but it never worked, and she wished that she could be better at believing, or maybe just better at thriving. But believing was so hard, and she couldn’t thrive any more than a lightless world could shine.

Living on Earth meant living with death. It meant living with pain, with sickness, with starvation and dehydration, with knowing what it meant to die and knowing that sometimes it was worse to live. It meant living with all the terrible things that a planet could do to people, and all the terrible things that people could do to a planet. Worse still, it meant living with all the terrible things that people could do to each other, all the terrible things that friends could do to the people they cared about, all the terrible things that good people ignored for the sake of survival. That was living on Earth, and that was friendship. All of human existence, the best and the worst, locked up tight together, and for a long and bitter time she let herself believe that when her father told her Death was a friend it meant that he at least had the dignity to take a little of the pain away when he came visiting, which was a whole lot more than could be said for the desperate and angry souls clawing at the earth.

Things were very different on G889. It was survival here too, just like it was always survival on Earth, but it wasn’t the same. These people, these strangers who would become new friends in a new world… they didn’t know what desperation was, and they weren’t clawing at the earth. They were station folk, and that made them civilised.

Bess Martin didn’t know what it meant to be civilised. Two years on the stations had softened her a little, helped her to see the way they lived and the way they thought, but she still didn’t understand it, and she still wasn’t one of them. She didn’t fit, and that was all right because she didn’t really want to. Morgan could shine and polish her all he liked, but even he couldn’t make a diamond out of a chunk of coal. She knew how deeply that frustrated him, but in truth it was just fine with her; she wasn’t like them, and she knew (as he couldn’t) that coal was worth a whole lot more than diamond when you were scrabbling to survive. Frankly, she’d sooner stay alive by clawing at the earth than look good while she starved to death.

Those were lessons that these station folk hadn’t learned yet. The very idea of clawing at the earth horrified them, she knew; they looked down at the dirt like it was something dangerous, like it would eat them alive if they took their eyes off it. She saw the way they ate their meals, ravenous even when they’d eaten just a few hours earlier, and then stared mournfully at their empty bowls. They always had more than they needed, and always complained because it was less than they wanted. That was something Bess could not understand, and the part of her that remembered her father’s face hoped she never would.

She lived on the stations with Morgan for two years, and in all that time she’d never managed to finish a meal. Not once. There was always too much of everything, too much excess and too much extravagance; it was intimidating and it soured her stomach with guilt. She would think of her father down on Earth, of friends who had to steal to survive, of all the people still down there, starving and desperate and dying, and excused herself before the tears could stain the silverware.

The guilt wasn’t dismissed as easily as a meal, though, and it had followed her all the way to G889. Twenty-two light-years later, time and distance that she still couldn’t wrap her head around, and she still felt the tug of it just as fiercely as she had back there. Her father was probably dead now, killed by age if not by the lifestyle, and thinking about him just made her all the more determined to make him proud, to remember the things he’d taught her and do right by them.

She wasn’t like these people, these swaddled station folk; where they thought they could survive on more than they needed, she’d spent her whole life learning how to get by on less. An empty belly and a parched throat were small prices to pay for another day’s living, but it felt like she was the only one out here who realised it. The differences between them screamed at her now, just as they always had back on the stations, and made her feel better and worse at the same time. She knew survival in a way that they couldn’t, but what difference did that make when they wouldn’t listen to her anyway? She was just a stupid Earth girl, and she didn’t know all the clever things that came as second nature to people like them. It was just like Morgan always said, never stopping to think that the words might hurt: fact was, she wasn’t their kind of people.

Back on the stations, that accusation stung deep. It settled under her skin, a permanent reminder of where she came from and what she wasn’t; it made her feel inferior, foolish, and it made her quiet. On G889, though she knew they still looked at her the same way, it felt a little different. She felt like she understood their situation in a way that they didn’t, like she knew better than anyone the kind of existence they’d crashed into, like for once she had something to offer, if only they’d lock up their prejudices and listen a little. For the first time in her life, she felt like the things she knew were things worth knowing, like maybe she’d be useful out here after all. Out here, with nothing else for them to lean on, maybe she’d even come to be valuable.

Out here, twenty-two light-years away from everything she’d ever known, maybe that lifeless little Earth girl would finally find a place to thrive.

—

Commander O’Neill was dead.

That was the first thing they told her, and the looks on their faces haunted her dreams when she fell asleep that night. It wasn’t exactly the warm welcome they’d been hoping for, and Morgan wasted no time in lamenting that they could have at least waited until they’d got some food in them before starting the lambaste of bad news, but Bess was glad that they hadn’t wasted any time. The burden of carrying bad news was far heavier than the burden of sharing it, and even if her husband had no interest in showing sympathy, she at least was happy to share it as best she could.

She didn’t know the commander, had only met him a handful of times and even then only as Mrs Morgan Martin, so the news didn’t affect her in the way she was used to. She was used to death being something personal, something intimate, but when she thought of the commander, she realised she could barely even remember his face. Still, she could see the void his death had gouged out in his friends as clear as daylight, and though she didn’t really know them any better than she’d known him, she at least knew well enough how they felt.

Death was like an old friend to an Earth girl, but to these pampered station folk it was a new and terrible thing. They were devastated, and they didn’t know what to do with that feeling. Bess knew; she didn’t need to see a body to know what one looked like, or hear the cries of grief to trace their salt tracks, but these people did; she imagined most of them had never seen a body in their life, had never cried with anything other than joy. They didn’t know how to bury a friend, and they didn’t know how to mourn one either. Bess had learned those things before she was even half as old as little Uly Adair, and seeing so many people learning for the first time made her feel very old.

The trouble with station folk was that they were all so independent. On Earth, even selfishness was a symbiotic thing, mutually acknowledged and agreed upon. On the stations — and out here, surrounded by people who still imagined they were back there — people didn’t stop to think about others. They thought about themselves. It kicked at Bess’s heart to see the way they treated each other, the way they used their commander’s death like currency, like the most important thing in all of this was to validate their own pain. Nobody offered anyone else a word of comfort or a kind thought; they were all too busy insisting that their pain was worse.

Bess still couldn’t understand living like that. After two years on the stations with Morgan, it was a little less jarring, but that didn’t make it any less sickening, and seeing the same thing now, in the one place where everyone needed a sense of community so much more than a sense of superiority, it just made her sad. Everything was a competition up there, and everyone wanted to come out on top; it didn’t matter if they were all going through the same thing, it only mattered who was going through it worst. It was almost enough to make her long for those dark and dangerous mine tunnels, the cries of dying men, and old friends who stole souls to survive.

Morgan was worse than the rest of them combined, except maybe Devon Adair though she supposed she should’ve expected that. He set to work immediately, antagonising anyone he could find, never stopping to think that they were all in this together. Like usual, he blundered through everyone else’s misery like it didn’t mean anything just because it wasn’t his, and it was hurtfully similar to the blind obsession that Devon had for her son. Bess understood that, at least at first; while he was gone, spirited away by the strange creatures that populated this planet, it was understandable that the world would stop for his worried mother. But even after his return, he was all she could see, and all she cared about. And on this strange new planet, that was the kind of selfishness that survival couldn’t afford.

She didn’t say anything, though. Not to Morgan and not to Devon, not to any of them. It wasn’t her place to tell them how to feel, or even how to survive, and she would not risk spreading the dissension even further by forcing herself into places where she didn’t belong. Morgan was doing that well enough for them both, and Bess knew from repeated experience that often the best thing she could do was the exact opposite of whatever he was doing. It had been that way for as long as she’d been with him, and she wasn’t quite so naive as to think it would change now just because the scenery had.

Well, she decided, if that was her place here that was just fine with her. In the first place, she was much more comfortable making peace than war, and besides all that a pretty smile was about the only thing she had to offer most of the time anyway. At the very least, her smiles went a whole lot further than Morgan’s surly scowls, and if the others’ less-than-hospitable welcome was anything to go by, they’d need all the peacemaking they could get.

Besides, if there was one thing she could tell right away about this place, it was that smiles were in short supply.

—

“True?”

The girl had surrendered her name the last time they spoke with some reluctance, and Bess could tell that it would be a struggle getting her to give up anything more. She was clearly well-raised, and felt a kind of obligation to pay back politeness in kind, but that went only to a point. If the line was crossed and someone pushed a little too far into her personal space, it wouldn’t matter how kind or sweet they were, or how well-intentioned: she would retreat quicker than anyone could blink. It was a point of pride, Bess knew, and recognised it well; nothing was more important to an angry little girl than pride, not even politeness.

With the benefit of hindsight, she supposed that she was probably much the same way at that age. The worst kind of fear bred the worst kind of anger, and she remembered all too well the spiral of emotion churning in her own head. Fear of all the things she didn’t know (or, worse, fear of the little she did), fear of death, fear of the pain that tore down grown men without a thought. Fear of everything, because the world she lived in was full of frightening things, and with that fear the anger. Anger at herself for being so frightened in the first place, anger at her father for making her live in a place that was so frightening, anger at those grown men who let those frightening things hurt them and kill them. It was hard to be frightened without being angry, and harder still to be angry without being frightened.

There was a kind of uncut familiarity in True’s face, the tightness of her jaw and the defiant flash of her eyes, a kind of softness that she was trying a little too hard to hide, the fear she didn’t want to admit cowering behind the anger that was her lifeline. She was so young, with so much to be angry at and so much more to be afraid, and for a moment or two she looked so much like that lifeless little girl Bess had left behind on Earth that it almost stole her breath. True was sullen and abrasive, belligerent in a way that Bess was never allowed to be; her features twitched in an unspoken threat, but there was just the faintest glimmer of life beneath the silence and the stubbornness, a flicker of innocence, and that made Bess want to chip away and expose it like coal — like _diamond_ — to the air.

“What do you want?”

Bess smiled, unruffled by the forced belligerence. “Nothing, really,” she said. “Just figured I’d check up on you.”

“Why?”

She spread her arms, good-natured and cheerful. “Why not?”

True narrowed her eyes at that, as though suspecting a trick. Maybe she would’ve tried a little harder to hide that little glimmer of life, of hope, if she’d been with anyone else, but Bess was long past the point of being offended when someone underestimated her, and True must have realised that it would have been futile to try and intimidate her into leaving. It was easy to mistake stupidity for ignorance, or a lack of knowledge for a lack of insight, and though Bess would be the first to admit that she knew very little about very little, still she knew enough about human nature to forge a connection. Intellect didn’t get you very far on Earth, but empathy was as rare as coal, and she knew that a smile could cut through even the worst fear-fuelled anger. 

“I don’t need anyone checking up on me,” True muttered. “I can take care of myself.”

Bess had no doubt that was true. They’d barely known each other a day, but it didn’t take much more than that to see just how much this angry young girl had going for her, how intelligent she was, how resourceful… and, above all, how determined to prove it. The fire in her was a familiar one, that desperate need to impress that was a staple of most pre-teens. Certainly, it was a staple of her own childhood, and she remembered all too vividly how hard she’d wished for a little respect. Children were a burden on Earth, and it was no secret that they were often considered more trouble than they were worth; she knew all too well the feeling of worthlessness, the need to prove that she wasn’t.

True was already worth more than Bess could ever be, though, whether she could see it in herself or not. Bess didn’t need to be station folk, or even vaguely intelligent, to see that. She’d seen the way the girl toyed with the gadgets and gizmos they’d salvaged from the crash, helping out the rest of them with this and that, always doing something just to keep herself busy, keep herself useful. The things she did made no sense at all to Bess, and that just confirmed what she already knew just by looking at her: that True didn’t need to impress anyone because she already had.

The girl was smart. Anyone could see that. And it wasn’t just station-smart, either, the kind of smart that Morgan flaunted so readily, the kind that was all education and no experience, all mouth and no action. Morgan could talk his way into or out of anything he wanted, but if you took away his voice he’d be lost and helpless, and Bess suspected the same was true of most of the station folk, from the rich princess Devon Adair to the sassy flyboy Alonzo Solace. Even True’s own father had his share of station arrogance, for all that he claimed to be a working man, but he hadn’t passed that on to his kid.

True was really smart, properly smart. She was the kind of smart that couldn’t be taught, the kind of smart that dazzled and blinded anyone who looked directly at it. She was the kind of smart that, with a little space and sunlight, could blossom and bloom into something very special indeed. Bess had seen that kind of smart maybe once in her whole life, and seeing it again now made home feel just a little less far away.

She didn’t say so out loud, though, didn’t want to risk encouraging that station arrogance that she’d seen in her father, didn’t want to risk seeing True look at her the way that he did, the way they all did. So she didn’t say anything about it, didn’t tell her any of the things she ached for the girl to know. Instead, because it was the thing she did best, she just smiled a little brighter and nodded.

“I know you can,” she said. “Hell, between you and me, you’re doing a whole lot better out here than I am.”

That wasn’t true at all, but she trusted that True, like everyone else, had already diagnosed Morgan’s inability to cope as a symptom shared by them both, painting her with the same brush they’d already used to tar her husband. Besides, if it gave True a little ego boost to think that she was tougher than one of the grown-ups, then the presumption did a whole lot more good than harm.

“So why are you checking up on me, then?” True demanded sullenly.

Bess shrugged. “Well, sometimes it’s just nice to have a little company, even if we don’t need it. Don’t you think?”

True frowned at that, a little thoughtful, like she was trying to figure out whether Bess was patronising her or whether she really was that cloyingly saccharine. “You mean _you_ want a little company,” she said at last.

She clearly expected it to sting, like the idea of wanting or needing anything was so embarrassing that even Bess would be offended. Her eyes sparked a little, alight with a hint of malice as she watched for a reaction, the light dimming to disappointment when none came. If she wasn’t worried about undoing what little progress she’d made, Bess would’ve laughed at the simplicity of it all. Station folk were always so proud, always so quick to see an insult in the least little thing. Everything came with a price for them, even the smallest kindness, but they didn’t have the good old-fashioned experience that Earth folk had to know that a bruised ego was no price at all to pay for feeling a little better.

It was a kind of luxury, that stiff station pride, and Bess couldn’t help feeling a little jealous as she met True’s defiance with carelessness. When she was that age, denying a kindness was not only stupid, it was dangerous; nobody knew where the next scrap of food would come from, and so nobody was foolish enough to turn one down if it was offered. They had to take what they could get; there was simply no other choice, and there was no such thing as pride to a people scrabbling just to stay alive.

Proud little girls like True could probably learn a lot from that kind of upbringing, but Bess was glad they didn’t have to. Youth was a fleeting thing, and she wouldn’t squander True’s with harsh reality; no doubt this planet would do that quickly enough. Let the girl cling to her pride if it kept her strong; let her pretend that Bess was the weak one, the silly shameful one who needed a little company. Let her believe what she wanted, if only it would shield her a little longer from the things she’d soon learn all too well. And so, with a careless little grin, she took the accusation for what it was, and ran with it.

“Well, sure I do,” she said. “There’s no shame in wanting a little company now and then, is there?” True stared at her for a moment, but didn’t speak, so Bess pressed on. “I mean, it’s all well and good, me spending all my time with Morgan… but we’re a group now. All of us. And I think we should try to get to know each other a little better, maybe learn to get along.” That was probably too much to ask for, but she didn’t say so aloud. “Since we’re stuck together and all, it makes a kind of sense, right?”

True huffed, like that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. She opened her mouth to speak, and it was only when she let out a tired sigh instead of a thinly-veiled insult that Bess realised it was the latter she’d been expecting. _Stupid Earth girl_ , maybe; she’d heard that one more times than she could count, and it struck like a blow every time. True was still young and at least mostly innocent, but she was surely old enough to understand the differences between them, and Bess had heard crueler words from younger mouths back on the stations. It stung that she still expected it, even out here, and it stung even deeper to know that she probably always would.

At last, after a long and somewhat painful moment, True finally did speak. “You don’t know very much, do you?”

Bess flinched by reflex, but even as she did she realised that the words weren’t meant the way they sounded. True didn’t mean it cruelly, she could tell; she just didn’t know how else to say it. She didn’t mean it the way that Bess had heard it a thousand times before, probably didn’t have the least idea how many times it had hurt, but she was still young and proud and station-raised, and clumsy half-insults were all she could manage when faced with someone like Bess, someone who really was stupid, someone who really didn’t know very much. How else could you speak to a person like that if you’d never met one before? How else could you point to the truth, except by saying it?

Truth was, she sounded almost envious, almost like she wished she could know as little as Bess did. As proud as she was, clearly there was some part of her that recognised the freedom it took to be so open and carefree, to smile and shrug and admit to wanting little things like company, a part of her that knew that was a freedom she didn’t have for herself, a part of her that wanted it.

It must be hard being so smart, Bess thought soberly. True probably wished that she could turn off all the things she knew, shut down all of that blinding smartness that promised so many great things, wished for just a day or an hour or even five minutes where she could just be a careless kid, not smart or resourceful or anything at all. Perhaps for the first time, Bess found herself wondering if maybe being smart, in its own sad way, was as much of a burden as being stupid.

“No,” she admitted, very softly. “I’m afraid don’t know very much at all.”

True studied her for a very long moment, then rolled her shoulders. When she sighed again, it was a little softer, a little less heavy and a little more curious. For a moment — and it was just a moment, no more — she sounded almost like a child again, almost like the child Bess used to imagine she herself could be if she was raised up on the stations instead of down in the dirt. If just for a moment, a young girl sounded like a young girl, careless and unfettered and almost free, and that was worth all the half-insults in the world.

“Good.” She said it slowly, thoughtfully, like it had taken a great deal of thought to get there. “Knowing stuff is boring.”

It wasn’t quite acceptance, but it was as close to it as Bess had ever got from station folk, and it stung like salt behind her eyes.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and turned her face away.


	2. Chapter 2

Mornings were tough on everyone, and they only got tougher once they started moving.

It made perfect sense to leave the crash site, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier on the few who wanted to stick around and wait for a miracle to bring their beloved commander back from the dead. It was an understandable impulse, if unnecessarily frivolous; this new planet had left its mark on them already, and one glance at Ulysses Adair was enough to make anyone believe in miracles, but common sense won out in a majority vote over that station-bred idealism, and barely two days after falling out of the sky, they found their feet and learned to walk.

For Morgan’s sake, Bess had held her tongue while the rest of the group voted it out; she didn’t want to put him on the spot by voting against him, and honestly she wasn’t entirely sure her opinion would count for anything anyway. Still, though, the result made her happy. Motion and momentum were good friends to struggling survivors, and she knew that having a destination, however distant, would keep these folks from losing their minds to their grief. They needed something to do, something to think about, and moving would give them both of those things. She was glad for them, and glad for the new lease of life that would come, in time, with being in motion.

Still, though that first morning after they started to move was tough, and breakfast was a subdued affair. Morgan ate more than his fair share, so Bess balanced it out by eating nothing at all. Not that anyone noticed, of course — they were all too busy complaining about the husband’s misdemeanours to acknowledge the wife’s sacrifice — but she didn’t care too much about that. She was long accustomed to being tarred with the same condemnation that Morgan got, and she didn’t really expect anything different here, at least not until they knew her a little better. And anyway, that wasn’t why she did it. Fact was, they’d all regret it soon enough if someone didn’t cut back on their rations, and Bess was the only one in any position to really understand what that meant. She’d seen it before, too many times, and she had no intention of seeing it again. If that meant a little thankless sacrifice on her part, then so be it.

And so, while Morgan stuffed his face and complained that there wasn’t enough, and while the rest of the group stuffed theirs and complained about him, Bess simply filled her cup with water and sought out a quiet little place where no-one complained about anything.

—

Even the kids were fighting this morning.

She could hear them a short distance away, squabbling and shouting at each other over silly little nothings, arguing over rocks and personal space and a dozen other things that didn’t matter. It might have been a problem yesterday; hell, in two days’ time it might become one. It was never a good idea to encourage fighting, especially amongst the young, and it didn’t take much for a silly little disagreement over a rock to devolve into something very damaging indeed. Bess knew that, and she knew that she should intervene, but she just didn’t have the heart to cut in and take that silliness away. Not today, anyway.

Honestly, it was just such a relief to hear them talking to each other at all. Uly’s disappearance had left everyone scared and worried, and his return had thrown up more questions than answers. Bess knew that Devon had been driven half-mad by the strain of it all, but she also knew how deeply little True had taken the whole thing to heart, blaming herself for a childish mistake that anyone could’ve made. It was good to see her lighting up again, good to see her fire fuelled and turned towards being a kid again, good to see that her guilt and self-loathing didn’t change the way she saw the boy who would be her only like-minded companion in this place.

They both seemed to relish the fighting. Uly was bright-eyed and eager, excessively passionate about everything he could find, enthused in the way that young boys often were when they got their strength back after a long illness. He was invigorated, enthralled, and though Bess had never met the boy before the crash she could see that the light in him was something wholly new, and deeply exciting. True, meanwhile, was just annoyed that someone could be so energetic so early in the morning, and took great joy in telling him to sit down, shut up, and stop running around. She sounded more like his mother than Devon did, truth be told, but it was endearing coming from her. The whole thing was kid’s stuff, nothing more and nothing less, but the sight of it after everything that had happened was deeply touching.

Until now, True had been boiling over with quiet frustration, self-directed and seething. Even last night, even knowing that Uly was back with them, safe and sound and healthier than he’d ever been, still she’d been sullen and stoic. She’d mustered a smile or two for Bess’s sake, but that was all she’d had in her, and Bess had wondered if maybe it would take the girl far longer than the boy to recover from the ordeal. Guilt was one of the hardest things to get over, after all, and True seemed to take a lot of things more personally than she should. But a decent night’s sleep seemed to have done her a world of good, and seeing for herself that Uly really was fine — better than fine — seemed to have given True a new lease of life. She seemed almost happy to be so angry, relishing the resentment and the conflict, and it was a refreshing change from the broken-down little thing Bess had come to know over the last couple of days.

The same was true of Uly, though Bess wasn’t really in any position to understand what he’d gone through. She didn’t know anything about his disease, the so-called ‘syndrome’ that was rife among the station children; she wasn’t smart like Doctor Heller or directly involved like Devon Adair, and she had no reason to dig deeper and understand the condition or what it meant. But she knew enough to know that Uly had been sick and now he wasn’t, that he had been effectively crippled by whatever was wrong with him and now he was running around with just as much energy as True. Bess couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling, healthy and strong and whole for the first time in his life. He was exuberant, and True was invigorated by how much that exuberance annoyed her, and together they were bright and warm in the early sunlight. They were so eager, so alive, basking in the sweet innocence of fighting about nothing, and though she knew that she should, still Bess was loathe to ruin the moment by breaking them apart.

So, instead, she just watched. Let the lectures come tomorrow if it got worse. Better still, let their respective parents step in and do the job themselves, because Bess had no intention of taking away their little comforts. And anyway, at least True and Uly had the excuse of actually being children to justify their childish behaviour, which was a whole lot more than could be said for Morgan and his new enemies.

“Charming, aren’t they?”

She jolted, startled by the unexpected intrusion, and what was left of her water splattered wastefully to the ground as the cup fell from her hands. It started to roll as it hit the floor, and she dropped into a quick crouch, scrambling to retrieve it before it escaped; even something as small as a tin cup could be a crucial resource on this planet, and she wasn’t about to be the first to lose one through carelessness.

“Yale!” she blurted, flushing furiously as she grabbed the runaway cup with both hands and straightened back up. “You startled me…”

That probably went without saying, but she had to do something to explain away her clumsiness before he made his judgement and started looking at her like she was stupid, like all those other station folk did. He didn’t usually look at her that way, was usually kinder and more patient than Morgan and the others, and his voice was always soft and sincere, even when she didn’t understand what he was saying. He made her think that maybe it wasn’t so bad not to know things, and it would be a terrible shame if she threw all that away now.

He didn’t seem particularly affected by her clumsiness yet, though, or by her futile attempts to explain it away. There was a hint of amusement quirking at the corners of his mouth, yes, but it was little more than a flicker, and for the most part his face was a mask of quiet concern, respectable and respectful, the kind of expression that Bess wasn’t used to seeing aimed at her.

“I can see that.” She could hear that same little wisp of amusement in the way he spoke, too, but the delicate rumble of his voice made it sound gentle, almost affectionate. “I apologise,” he went on. “It wasn’t my intention to sneak up on you, and I certainly didn’t mean to alarm you.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “You didn’t… well, at least not really. I just wasn’t paying proper attention, that’s all. I figured all the rest of you were still eating breakfast, and I guess I wasn’t…” She cut herself off quickly before her mouth had a chance to run away with her brain. “Well, that doesn’t matter none, does it? No harm done, right?”

He nodded, lips twitching ever so slightly. “Precisely.”

Bess stared down at the cup in her hand, feeling suddenly exposed and uncomfortable. Yale wasn’t like the other station folk, and not just because he was partly machine. He was super-smart, smarter than the rest of them put together, but he never acted like that made him better, or like it made anyone else worse if they weren’t so smart. Yale never raised his voice, never said a hard word, was never cruel or mean or judgemental, and he never, ever talked down to anyone. Not even the children. Not even Bess.

He didn’t treat her like the others did. He wasn’t impatient or dismissive or judgemental. He didn’t roll his eyes or mutter when she struggled with something that would’ve come as second nature to one of them, and he didn’t make her feel bad for needing things explained. He didn’t click his tongue the way that Morgan did, or treat her like an idiot like Devon Adair did. He didn’t laugh at her like Alonzo Solace or tap his foot like Doctor Heller. They all had their own ways of letting her know that she wasn’t one of them, all had their own little tics and tricks to remind her that she was less than them. They looked at her like she was stupid, assumed she didn’t know anything at all about civilised living just because she’d put her VR gear on backwards the first time she used it.

In his own way, Morgan was the worst of them. He had a hard time keeping his opinions to himself at the best of times, but it was at its worst when she talked about her upbringing. His face would crumple, like he’d just tasted something unpalatable, like Earth was something rotten and the people who lived there were rotten too; for her part, Bess would gladly eat something rotten if the alternative was starving, but when she told Morgan that he looked at her like she’d just bathed in blood. She knew how he felt about her, how they all felt about her and people like her, but Yale didn’t seem to feel that way at all. He was the only one who didn’t think less of her because of where she was from, the only one who didn’t think she was stupid just because she didn’t know anything.

 _“It’s just part of his programming,”_ Morgan had told her, dismissing it like it was something bad. _“He’s not allowed to have opinions.”_

Bess couldn’t help thinking that was a good way to be, but she knew better than to say so out loud. Still, though, sometimes she thought about spending more time with Yale, maybe even asking him to tutor her. Morgan said that was his job, that he used to tutor Uly back on the stations, that he’d even tutored Devon way back when, that he’d probably start tutoring the kids again once they got a little further underway. So then, if he could do all that, why not tutor her too? If anyone could teach her the things the station folk knew, the things she didn’t, the things that made her stupid… well, then, who better than the one who seemed to know everything about everything? Who better than the one person in the group who seemed to know that the only way to stop a person from being stupid was to help them get smarter.

It was embarrassing, though, and even just the thought of asking made her feel hot and uncomfortable, shame rising up inside her with a reminder of all the ways she was less, all the ways she really was stupid. Yale was about the only one who didn’t think she was an idiot; she couldn’t very well go and ruin that by letting him know that she was one after all, could she? She couldn’t bear to see the same look on his face that she saw on Devon’s, on Alonzo’s or Doctor Heller’s, even on her own husband’s. She couldn’t bear to lose what little dignity she had in front of the one person who made her feel like she deserved it.

So, instead, she just smiled and watched the children, let herself bask in the way they delighted in conflict, the way they could yell at each other in one moment and then laugh the next. Simplicity and innocence, and why couldn’t the rest of them be more like that? Why did growing up mean losing so much?

“Yeah,” she said at last, a belated reply to his opening remark, though he’d no doubt forgotten it by now. “Yeah, they’re real charmers. Both of ’em.” She didn’t need to look at him to know that he wasn’t watching the children at all, that he was focused on her instead, and she shifted uncomfortably. “They’re holding up pretty good, wouldn’t you say? All things considered and all.”

“All things considered…” he echoed politely, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Yes. I’d say they’re holding up remarkably well.”

 _Remarkably well._ Bess swallowed, committing the words to memory. It sounded so much better than the way she said it, so much smarter and stronger. She locked her gaze on the kids, silently trying to shape her tongue around the words that Yale said, and studied the lines of dust as True kicked a dirt clod in Uly’s general direction, a blow that wasn’t really intended to land. Her jaw was clenched tight but her eyes were as bright as Uly’s, and the sight of it flared like warmth in Bess’s chest. She wondered what they’d think of her, fumbling with words like this, trying to look smart in front of the one person who didn’t care if she was stupid. No doubt they’d think it was ridiculous; True would call her ‘weird’ and tell her again how it was boring to be too smart, then Uly would probably ask why it was so important to her, and Bess would have to explain that she didn’t know that either.

“Kids are good that way,” she murmured, almost to herself, watching them and thinking about herself. “They’re real tough. Tougher than the grown-ups, for sure, and a whole lot happier most of the time too.” True kicked another dirt clod, bigger and heavier, and Bess thought of mine tunnels and cave-ins, of a lifeless little girl in a lightless world. “You can go through pretty much anything at that age and still come out smiling at the end of the day, long as you got some quiet place to catch your breath.” She closed her eyes. “You’ll see. Those two’ll be faring better than any of us before too long.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Yale murmured, sounding thoughtful; Bess wondered if he was remembering Devon at that age, a pampered and privileged princess who always did what she was told. “From my experience, Ulysses is an incredibly resilient child. If this little incident has taught us anything, I’d say it’s taught us that. And True…”

“True’s special,” Bess heard herself blurt out, the words coming fast before she could stop them, and she instantly wished she could take them back because they made her sound small and stupid and over-excited. “She’s smart, and resourceful.”

Yale made a low sound in his throat, somewhere between a cough and a chuckle. Bess couldn’t quite figure out whether it was amusement or concern that shaped the noise, whether he thought it was sweet that she cared so much for someone else’s child or was concerned that she was encouraging bad behaviour. The obliqueness that made her uncomfortable, and she was about to ask him if he thought she was wrong when he cut her off by shaking his head, smiling at some private little thought.

“She certainly is… spirited… isn’t she?”

“She is,” Bess said, taking the words as a kind of agreement. “I’m telling you, Yale, if I’d had half the brains she has at her age, maybe I—” But that was everything she didn’t want him to see in her, the thoughts inside her her and the stupidity that he pretended so politely not to see, and so she cut herself off quickly and rushed on. “Anyhow. Point is, they’re great kids, and it’s nice to see them getting along so well after… well, you know…”

“After everything that’s happened,” Yale offered, with as much neutrality as he could.

He sounded more than a little dubious, but was tactful enough not to voice out loud whatever concerns were running through his head. She wondered if he was trying to be diplomatic, or if he just didn’t think she was smart enough to make a discussion of it. Maybe he’d seen the way she watched True, caught the ghosts in her eyes, and didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by saying what she knew he was feeling: that ‘ _spirited_ ’ was just code for ‘ _potential troublemaker_ ’. Hell, maybe he just felt that it wasn’t his place to say anything about it at all; True was no more his child than she was Bess’s, after all, and it really wasn’t either of their business. She’d probably never know which one it was, or if it was something else entirely, that made him hold his tongue, but one part of her was grateful for his silence while another wished that one of them would have had the courage to talk about it, to discuss the the one thing nobody wanted to talk about.

 _It wasn’t her fault,_ Bess thought, but she couldn’t say that any more than Yale could say _‘Yes, it was’_.

—

The day passed slowly, but that was to be expected.

It was one of the more surreal adjustments they’d all had to make to this new planet, how differently time went by, and it would take more than a day or two of travelling to kick the groggy confusion that came with it. Daylight hours were much shorter than the standards on the stations and on Earth, but it didn’t feel like things were happening any faster; the journey still felt endless, their progress painfully slow, and an hour felt like ten when it was surrounded by the same scenery. It was tiring, for some more than others, and morale dropped quicker than the sun.

Morgan complained incessantly, and so did a few others, but that didn’t keep Devon from telling them every few minutes what ‘good time’ they were making. Bess had no idea what ‘good time’ meant, or how Devon was measuring it in the first place, but she didn’t really care; the technicalities were hardly important when the words helped to sustain their flagging enthusiasm and made them feel like they were doing something useful. After the last couple of days that was vital, and Bess was more than a little impressed by the way Devon kept things rolling along. A positive attitude was worth a thousand miles of transit and more; in the end it would be the only thing keeping them going, maybe the only thing keeping them alive at all, and she wanted to tell Devon that, to praise her for thinking ahead, but she had a feeling that she wouldn’t listen even if she did.

None of them listened to her, really, not even Morgan. Sometimes she tried to break the weary silence, tried to make idle chitchat with Baines or Magus, tried to engage Doctor Heller or the sulking Alonzo, but it never worked; they all looked at her the same way, with that bitter station-folk disdain, the kind of disdain that demanded to know what she wanted and why she was wasting their time with it. They all looked at her like that, even when she imagined she had something worthwhile to say. Morgan, Devon, all of them, all except Yale and sometimes the kids, and seeing it time after time left her more worn out and exhausted than nine months’ worth of travel ever could.

They stopped some time before sunset, while there was still enough light to unpack and set up their makeshift camp. For her part, Bess couldn’t help thinking it was a bit of a shame to stop so early, with so much light and while they were making such ‘good time’; she was still used to Earth living, that desperate scrabble for survival, every minute taken up with one thing or another, and it felt unnatural to spend so much time settling down. Still, it was probably a good thing to take things slower and safer when they had no way of knowing what was lurking out there, and they’d already seen enough dangers in this place to justify a little caution. Besides, with enough time and practice, no doubt they’d find the pace naturally picking up soon enough.

The reprieve from the road did little to stop Morgan from complaining, but at least it quieted the others. The little tasks and mundanities that came with setting up the camp kept them all occupied, and most of them were too busy and too focused to waste any of their precious breath on complaining. Morgan was the obvious exception, but then again he usually was, and it didn’t take much effort at all for Bess to tune out his diatribes as she worked on unpacking boxes and finding space.

Besides, there was no shortage of distractions out here. People milling to and fro, voices calling out for advice on where to stash this or that, how to set up a tent, when they’d be eating. It was a bustle of activity, and it was refreshing to see the rest of the group offering a united front for once, all coming together in pursuit of a common goal. Admittedly, setting up camp wasn’t exactly the peak of accomplishments, but even the little things seemed big when you were building up from nothing.

The children seemed happy too, and as always their mirth was infectious. It did them a world of good, stepping down after so much travel, stretching their legs and running around, having the freedom to just be kids for a while, no matter how short. Bess watched them as they ran about and shortly ran off, delightfully over-excited by the even simplest things. Just as their antics that morning had filled her with peace, the sight of them together now did the same again, and she smiled to herself through the drone of Morgan’s complaining.

“Are you you even listening to me?”

She wiped the smile off her face with a force of will, struggling to muster a frown. “Of course I am.”

“No, you’re not.” His voice wavered, like it wasn’t sure whether to sound petulant or wounded, and when she turned to look at him she saw the same conflict twisting on his face as well. “God only knows what you’re thinking, but it’s not about me.”

Bess felt her lips twitch, an unpleasant mingling of amusement and annoyance, but she swallowed back the bitter chuckle before it could surface because she knew how he’d react. “Because it’s so unfathomable that you’d make me smile?”

“Unfathomable?” Morgan echoed, distracted by her vocabulary.

Bess flushed, feeling self-conscious. She hated the way he always stared at her when she used a larger-than-average word, hated the way he made her second-guess and wonder if she’d used it wrong, even when she knew perfectly well that she hadn’t. Sometimes she thought that perhaps she knew more than either of them gave her credit for, but it didn’t really matter in the end whether she did or not because Morgan and his station friends would always be there to stare at her like that, to make her question if even the few tiny things she did know weren’t all completely wrong.

“Well,” she muttered, shaking off the shame and wishing she’d never said the word at all. “You know what I mean.”

That just made him scowl all the more. “Well, however you want to phrase it, I really don’t think there’s anything worth smiling about in what I’ve been saying.”

Bess rolled her eyes. “Well, you say so much, Morgan, it’s hard to keep it all straight.”

“So you _weren’t_ listening!” he cried, sounding almost triumphant. Bess wondered what it said about him that he’d prefer to be right about something that made him miserable than wrong and happy. “I knew it!”

She sighed, still not entirely sure how this became an argument. “Is it really so unforgivable?”

“Well…”

“Well, what?” she demanded. “Do you really expect me to think about you every minute of every day?”

“Of course not,” he muttered, as petulant and sullen as anything she’d ever heard. “But when I’m talking to you, the least you could do is pay attention.”

“Why?” she shot back. “I already know what you’re saying, Morgan, because you say the same thing at least ten times an hour. It’s too hot or it’s too cold. It’s too bright or it’s too dark. The kids are too damn noisy and their damn parents should teach them some damn manners, or the kids aren’t making enough noise so they must be up to something.” Morgan opened his mouth to protest, but she kept right on going without giving him an opening. “Oh, I’m not done yet. You’re too hungry or you’re too thirsty or you’re too tired, or you’re too much of all those things at the same time and you can’t possibly be expected to work under such dreadful conditions. Did I miss anything?”

Morgan scowled. “You know, Bess, sometimes I think you don’t take my suffering seriously enough.”

She met his gaze, unwavering and unflinching, and that alone was enough to send him scuttling backwards a step or two.

“You know, Morgan,” she countered wryly, “sometimes I think you take your suffering too seriously.”

The jibe should have been enough, and on most days it would have been. Bess wasn’t vindictive and she wasn’t the kind to cut deep with her words just to prove a point. Honestly, even if she wanted to, most days she didn’t have a big enough arsenal to try, but regardless of that she simply had no interest in it. She knew who Morgan was, knew what he was like, and she wasn’t so naive as to think that she could change him at all, with cruel words or with kind ones. But there was something different in her today, something hotter.

Today, for some inexplicable reason, she could feel her temper rising with every word he said, every sly glance he cut in her direction, every moment he looked at her like she was less than him. It was irrational, she knew, but it was also unquenchable, a kind of frustration that had fired in her when she’d spoken to True last night and then reignited when she’d talked to Yale that morning. It made her wish that Morgan would look at her like they did, or at least try to see her that way, and a part of her hated that she felt that way, but she did. She wished she didn’t, or at least that she could be a little better at controlling herself, a little better at being one of those stoic and serious station folk, a little better at being like _him_. She wished she could be a lot of things, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t better, no matter how hard she tried, and she wasn’t station folk, no matter how long she lived there, and she could try all she wanted but she could never be any of those things. 

Morgan was all of those things. He was smart like all station folk were smart, smart in a way that was raised and not born, smart because it was all he knew how to be, just like all Bess knew how to be was stupid. Morgan thought with his head and complained with his mouth, and the different parts of him did what they were supposed to do, and that was just how it was. That was what it meant to be alive on the stations, but Bess wasn’t one of them and she couldn’t live like they did. Her parts didn’t work like Morgan’s did because they were made for different things. She couldn’t think with her head when her heart had so much to feel, and she couldn’t complain about being tired when she still had food and water and breath in her body.

Bess was an Earth girl. That was all she was, all she’d ever be. Just a stupid Earth girl who thought with her heart and not her head, who gave whatever she could spare because it might be the difference between life and death to someone else, who knew how to feel, how to understand, how to pray and grieve and scrabble in the dirt, who knew how to survive. That was her. That was Bess, and if it meant she didn’t know how to think or talk or use big words, how to be like station folk, how to be smart and serious… well, then, that was just fine because at least she was alive. She was _alive_. They were all alive out here, every one of them, and why was she the only one who realised that was enough?

“We’re not on the stations now,” she reminded him, voice coming from a great distance, like someone else was talking, not her. “You don’t get to call the shots and then complain because things don’t turn out the way you want. You don’t get to decide what happens here. No-one gets to decide, no-one but the planet, and we… we have to live with that, Morgan. We don’t get to push a button and wait for the world to change itself into what we want it to be. We don’t get to do that any more. This world isn’t your world, Morgan, and it’s not going to change for you.” She was breathing hard, but she didn’t dare to stop. “We’re the ones who need to change. Not the planet. _Us_. We have to learn, we have to adapt, we have to…”

“Bess…”

“We have to _survive_ , Morgan.” It was a plea. “We have to learn how to survive out here. All of us. Or I promise you, we’ll all be dead long before that colony ship ever gets here. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you see?”

He was seeing something, that much was obvious, but she didn’t think it was her point. Maybe it was just her; for once, there was no station snobbery in his face as he looked at her, no pretension or presumption, only a kind of breathlessness. He was looking at her like he’d never seen her before, like he couldn’t understand who this person was who’d been locked up inside his wife for so long. He looked more than just impressed, more like awestruck, the way he had on their wedding night, and she wasn’t sure whether to be touched by the raw emotion she saw in him or wounded because it only ever happened when something world-shattering happened.

He knew who she was and where she came from, knew everything about her, so why was it so inconceivable that she had such strong feelings about something like survival? Didn’t he understand what her life was like before he showed up and swept her away to his precious stations? Didn’t he understand what living on Earth truly meant? Did he really only see the dirt and the grime, not the blood and the sweat that made it? How could he know her so well, and still not know the first thing about who she was?

“Bess…” he managed again, voice shaking. “Bess, where’s all this coming from?”

“Me,” she said. “It’s coming from _me_ , Morgan. The same place it’s always been.”

He took a deep breath, and for a heart-rending moment or two it looked like he was going to apologise, like he was actually going to acknowledge that maybe she had something worth saying after all. Bess didn’t need her husband to validate what few meagre things she did know, but the moments when he looked at her like this were so rare, so precious, it was all she could do not to drown in them. His eyes were as bright as hers, his mouth half-open as he struggled for words, struggled to think of something that might balm the parts of her still back there, back home, back where survival was more than a word, more than just an idea, more than just something that happened to other people.

He wanted to say something, to say anything, to _do_ anything to make her forget — if only for a moment — that she was her upbringing, that she was Earth and everything on it. He wanted so badly to do what he’d done back then, to save her from the thing she used to be, an angry young girl scrabbling in the dirt and running away from her old friend Death. In an instant he was the man she’d married, the man she loved, the man who would do anything to take her to a better place than the one she knew. In an instant he was Morgan, her Morgan, and she knew that he would find the right words if she’d just give him a moment to think of them. If he just had a moment to figure out what she needed, she knew that he’d come through. He always did, when it was really important, and he would again now. She knew it. If only he had a moment… if only _they_ had a moment… if only…

A scream cut through the air, shrill and piercing, and shattered what might have been that moment into a thousand pieces.

In an instant, it was all gone. In an instant, there was nothing left of that raw emotion, nothing left of the breathlessness or the awe, nothing left of the man who would do anything to make her world better. In an instant, it burned away, lost to the terrified scream of a little girl — _True,_ she thought, in some distant corner of herself — and when she looked at him again he was just Morgan, the same old station-smart Morgan, shrieking and panicking and terrified that someone else’s horror might mean bad things for him.

“What the hell was that?” he cried.

Bess wasn’t listening, though. Her instincts had kicked in the moment she heard the scream, and she was already gone. By the time he got through his first syllable she’d already broken into a run, and by the time he’d finished the last she was already so far ahead of him that he had no chance of catching up. She’d been here before, and she knew what it would cost to wait for him; he might patronise her up on the stations, talking slowly so that she could follow along, but there was no place for that kind of faux-politeness here. A moment’s hesitation was the difference between life and death, and this group had already seen enough death in the day and a half they’d been here. She wouldn’t let them see any more.

“Bess!” Morgan was yelling, and she wished he could be as quick with his feet as he was with his mouth. “What _was_ that?”

“That was survival,” she shouted over her shoulder, already counting out the hundred possibilities that would meet her when she reached the source of that terrible scream, already bracing herself for a dozen types of death. “Get used to it.”

She could hear Morgan panting, the rasp and gasp as he tried to breathe and the clumsy stagger of his footsteps falling further and further behind. She heard the exertion, heard the hopelessness, and she knew that he would never catch up with her now. The irony wasn’t lost on her, of course, and if she wasn’t running on fear and anger — the two things that she saw of herself in poor young True, the two things that all young girls recognise in each other — she might have taken a sweet second or two to appreciate it.

Those station folk all looked at her like she was the liability, like she was slow and stupid, but she was the one who knew what to do now; she was the one already in motion, already up and running before the rest of them had pieced together what they were hearing. Ironic, yes, but a kind of tragic too, and as the old familiar fire flared up in her lungs — fear, anger, fear, anger, _adrenaline_ — she wished that she could make Morgan feel it too, wished that she could make them all feel it, wished that they could understand how it felt to know what waited with that scream. Maybe it would keep them all alive a little longer, if she could just make them understand how important it was to survive.

“Bess!” Morgan was shouting. “Bess, wait! You know I can’t run like you! _Bess_!”

She didn’t even look back.


	3. Chapter 3

His name was Gaal.

He was in no fit state for anything when they found him, semiconscious and halfway delirious, but most of the group was just relieved that it was him who’d been hurt and not one of the children.

Bess could understand how they felt, of course, but the sight of him brought back unbidden memories of cave-ins and mine collapses, the screams and sobs of grown men as they gurgled their last. The visions struck hard, an unexpected gut-punch of visceral things that she’d thought were forgotten, and for a moment she could only choke on them, turning away so that the others wouldn’t see the colour drain from her face, so that they wouldn’t think that she was as worthless in this as she was in everything else.

She remembered smoke and blood and sweat, pain and fear and grief, booming flashes of light and noise ripping through the suffocating black. She remembered her father’s face gashed open just like this, remembered the hazy half-thoughts gurgling in his throat as he told her he was sorry for things she didn’t understand. She remembered seeing his friends not so far away, so much worse, and the relief of knowing that he would survive even if they didn’t.

She remembered how guilty she’d felt about that, how long she’d spent punishing herself, trying to repent for her illicit thoughts; it was the first time she’d allowed someone else’s death to make her happy, and that happiness was the worst feeling in the world. She wondered if Devon Adair and John Danziger felt that way now, so happy that their children were safe that they didn’t spare so much as a thought for the man who wasn’t. She wondered if they would lie awake tonight feeling guilty like she had.

Getting him back to camp was easy enough with so many of them to help, but it was a whole lot harder to quiet the buzz of anticipation once it started. They’d all assumed they were the only people out here, that the planet was void and isolated from all human contact, and the sudden unexpected appearance of someone new had shocked and excited everyone. The murmurs were hushed and cautious, but it was obvious that they’d rise into a clamour if left unchecked, and so Julia Heller put her foot down and demanded that everyone leave the stranger in peace until he woke up. For her part, Bess was glad for the excuse to leave, too shocked and shaken to want to stick around.

True caught her by the sleeve as she passed, features flickering from discomfort to hope and back again, finally settling somewhere around anxiety. She looked shaken too; Bess supposed this was the first time she’d seen someone hurt like that, the first time she found a dying man.

“Did we do good?” she asked, a breathless half-whisper that she clearly didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Finding him, I mean. Was it a good thing, or a bad one?”

Honestly, Bess had no idea, and she knew better than to try and pretend that she did; kids could always see the truth behind a well-intentioned lie. “I don’t know, True,” she confessed. “I don’t know what’s going on any better than you do, so if you’re looking for a straight-up yes-or-no kind of answer, I’m afraid I don’t have one just now.”

True’s face fell. “Oh.”

Bess swallowed, thought of dying men, and tried not to let True see the ghosts in her head. “But if you just want to know how I feel about it personally,” she said instead. “Well, I don’t see how rescuing someone could ever be a bad thing. Even if you didn’t do right by your folks by running off like that, even if all you wanted was just to get in trouble… well, you might just have saved someone’s life by doing it. So it can’t be that bad of a thing, right?”

True relaxed a little, and let up the grip on her sleeve. “Right,” she agreed, a fraction too readily. “I mean, yes. I mean… I think it’s good. I think you’re right. It’s just… after what happened to Uly, you know…” She trailed off, looking helpless.

“I do know,” Bess told her. She tried to smile, to look reassuring, but she could still feel the memories at her back, her old friend Death still holding her in his thrall, and it was too hard to look anything other than tired. “But hey. Whatever happens, you did right by calling for us. You did right by trying to save him. And I don’t care what your daddy says to you, True, you hear me now: helping someone in need is never a bad thing. You hear me? Doesn’t matter who he is or how you came to find him, it’s never a bad thing to save a life.” She swallowed hard, throat tightening around something like fear, and blinked back mine-tunnel shadows. “Never.”

For a moment, True seemed almost overwhelmed, shuffling her feet and scuffing the dirt with her toes, like she didn’t know what to say or how to react. She looked almost like she wanted to hug her, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it, like the idea of showing so much emotion in a public place was the worst thing she could imagine. She seemed so uncomfortable, so awkward and embarrassed that Bess couldn’t help seeing a little of her father in her. She hadn’t known either of them very long, the father or the daughter, but already she could tell that neither one of them were comfortable letting out any kind of affection. It was sweet, if a little sad, and Bess would have smiled if she wasn’t still feeling edgy.

In the end, all True managed was a wan little smile, the kind that said she desperately wanted to believe in what Bess said but didn’t have the conviction. She wanted to believe all the kind things that Bess told her because Bess was an adult and she was supposed to know things that True herself didn’t, but neither of them were innocent enough to buy that. She was supposed to be worldly and clever, as smart as Yale and as resourceful as Devon, but she wasn’t either of those things, and even a child like True could see that.

Yale spoke with wisdom and knowledge, and Devon Adair spoke with experience and authority. Between them, they knew all the things that adults were supposed to know, and spoke in a way that adults were supposed to speak, and if True had chosen either of them to ask her questions, no doubt she would have believed everything they said without a second thought. But Bess wasn’t like them, and she couldn’t speak the way they did; she had no wisdom, and only the kind of experience that shouldn’t be shared with children. There was no authority in her when she spoke, and no knowledge either; all she had was cock-eyed optimism and a blithe kind of faith. She didn’t know what she was talking about most of the time, and True knew that as well as she did. Bess could hardly blame her for not believing a word she said.

Still, there was something soft and sweet behind that hopeful little smile, something warm and welcome in the way she looked like she wanted to hug her. She appreciated the effort, Bess could tell, even if it wasn’t good enough, and that meant a lot to them both. Maybe those kind words would balm her conscience a little, and maybe a little of that cock-eyed optimism would help her to sleep a little better tonight. It wasn’t much, not next to Yale or Devon or any of the others, but it was more than Bess could offer any of them, and she was glad that she could offer it to someone.

“Thank you,” True said softly.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and meant it with all her heart.

—

Gaal told his story that night over a light dinner, and Bess swallowed down the words much more eagerly than the food because they tasted so different to what she knew.

He spoke oddly, with an affected voice and a strange kind of intelligence, and used a lot of words that she didn’t understand. Still, she could piece together enough to know roughly what he was talking about — words like ‘astronaut’ and ‘lost’, at least to some extent — and she could figure out most of the rest by watching the faces of those around her. She’d become pretty good at that during her time on the stations, at smiling or frowning or shaking her head when others did, at figuring out the mood of a room based on how many people looked aghast at any given time. It was a unique kind of skill, a gift of the foolish, and she put it to good use here, picking apart Doctor Heller’s smiles and Alonzo’s frowns, Devon’s curiosity and Danziger’s disdain, figuring out the parts that split their opinions and trying to make sense of why. She didn’t know enough to have an opinion of her own, but it made her feel important that she was allowed to sit and listen with the rest of them.

“That’s a hell of tale you’ve got there,” Danziger muttered when the story was over; he looked even more cranky than Morgan, hunching over his spoon and growling like an alpha dog protecting its territory. “And quite a tall one, at that.”

“Danziger…” Devon hissed, a less-than-subtle warning that he pointedly ignored.

Gaal, on the other hand, was wholly unoffended. “Oh, he’s quite right,” he said with a smile, eyes flashing in a playful kind of challenge. “I wouldn’t believe a word I said either.”

“Glad we’re clear on that, at least,” Danziger muttered, and swung to his feet. “’Scuse me.”

Devon glared daggers at his back as he skulked sullenly out of the tent, but at least she had the good sense not to argue with him then and there. “Don’t pay him any attention,” she said instead, by way of apology to Gaal. “Danziger doesn’t like anything.”

“Or any _one_ ,” Morgan chipped in through a mouthful of spirulina.

Devon rolled her eyes. “Feel free to ignore him too,” she said.

Bess hid her face behind a sip of water so that Morgan wouldn’t see her grin. “He’s harmless,” she insisted, though a part of her couldn’t deny that Devon had a point; in truth, sometimes ignoring him really was the best option for everyone involved, but of course he was her husband and she had to at least try to protect him a little. “And he’s real glad to see you. Why, just yesterday he was telling me—”

“—how refreshing it would be to see another friendly face around here,” Morgan interrupted, coughing delicately. “That’s all. Right, honey?”

The grin split wider, and she had to bite the corners of her mouth to keep from laughing. “Right.”

Devon pinched the bridge of her nose. “Anyway…”

“Right,” Bess said again. “Sorry.” She turned back to Gaal, suddenly aware of the way he was studying them, so intent and so curious, like he really hadn’t seen another soul in years. It was enthralling, inconceivable, and before her scant common sense had a chance to catch up and tell her it was a bad idea, she heard her own voice blurting out, “Are you really an astronaut?”

“Said he was, didn’t he?” snorted Alonzo, then hushed as Doctor Heller elbowed him in the ribs.

Devon, meanwhile, had her head in her hands. “ _Anyway_ …”

Gaal ignored them both, tactfully keeping his attention on Bess. His smile was a little softer now, still friendly but almost sympathetic. “Indeed I am,” he said. “Well… ‘was’, I suppose. I don’t imagine they’ll be falling over themselves to take me back after all this time. But for a while there…” He sighed, almost wistful.

“Sorry,” Bess mumbled. “But, I mean, you were? A real, honest-to-God astronaut?”

His expression flickered then, into something almost angry. Even Bess was smart enough to see that she’d hit on something unpleasant, and when he spoke again it was with a dangerous edge to his voice.

“Well, I can’t say God had anything to do with it… but in theory, at least, yes. As you say. A real, honest-to-something astronaut.”

“Wow.”

It was all she could think of to say, just one stupid syllable, but she regretted it even before it was out. And there it was; just like that, nobody was looking at Gaal at all, because suddenly they were all looking at her.

Devon was groaning audibly, jaw so tight it had turned white, and Alonzo was fighting even harder to keep from laughing; Doctor Heller had the decency not to say anything herself, but she wasn’t even trying to keep Alonzo in check any more. Bess flushed hotly and sank down as far as she could into her seat. Part of her wished that she could be angry, offended by the way they treated her and upset that Morgan was too busy rolling his eyes to step in and defend her like she’d defended him a moment earlier. It was a very small part, though, and one that was almost entirely overshadowed by the part that just wanted the ground to swallow her up, the part that realise she’d put her foot straight in her mouth once again.

Why was it so terrible to ask questions? Why was it so unforgivable to be foolish? Why was it so embarrassing to think that someone or something was impressive, to be awed and excited by something new? Weren’t those all good things? Wasn’t it good to bring a little optimism to a group that was so lacking in all things innocent and exuberant, to be curious and inspired and enthusiastic? Why was simplicity such a hateful sin among these people?

It hurt because it was so different to the way they looked at Morgan. They hated him, truly hated him, in a way that she didn’t think they hated her, but still the way they looked at him was less cruel than the way they looked at her. They frowned at him through squinty eyes, shifty and cautious and judging, like they were afraid to turn their back on him for fear he’d stick a knife in it. They didn’t like him and they didn’t trust him — they thought he was a crook, heartless and void of integrity — but still somehow they respected him. In Morgan they saw someone a little too much like them, a little too much like the people they didn’t want to think of when they looked in the mirror, the ugly side of human nature. They saw gluttony and selfishness, cowardice and ambition. They saw a man who had sold himself to become someone different, and they resented him for it. They resented him because he had done things that they themselves could not.

When they looked at Bess, they didn’t see any of that. They didn’t see ambition or gluttony or the ugly side of human nature; most of the time she guessed they didn’t see much humanity in her at all. She was something less, something small and simple, an uncensored pipeline for foolish feelings; they looked at her and saw something less even than their children. She wondered if they wished she was younger so they could shoo her off to take care of True and Uly while the rest of them — the _adults_ — sat around and talked about adult things. She didn’t fit in with them, and it didn’t matter that they lacked the patience to listen to her because she didn’t have anything worth hearing anyway. _Stupid Earth girl_ , she thought, and felt cold all over.

“ _Anyway_ …” Devon said again, clearly struggling to salvage the moment and the group’s integrity. “As we were saying…”

Bess closed her eyes, and tried not to think.

—

Their tent felt like a cage that night, and she slept fitfully.

She dreamed of Earth, of smoke and blood and stone, of rocks carving out gashes in human faces and the screams of grown men begging to die. She dreamed of her father, of relief twisted into something horrible as another man died in his place, of the suffocating guilt that followed. She dreamed of whispered confessions in the dark, of a little girl’s voice begging for forgiveness and a disembodied voice telling her do no harm. She woke maybe a dozen times, frightened by how much she missed those terrible things. She felt cold and alone, and she clung to Morgan’s back like a child hiding from nightmares and shadows.

He didn’t wake, of course, but she was long used to that. He never did, no matter how much she thrashed, no matter what happened. If he so much as shifted in his sleep she woke instantly, but when she was the restless one he didn’t even stir. That was another of the differences between them, she supposed: where she was raised from an early age to sleep with one eye open, Morgan was station-bred and spoiled, and didn’t know what it meant to wake in terror. He knew only perfect peace, endless nights of uninterrupted slumber, waking up rested and safe in the morning. He slept the sleep of the dead, even out here on an alien planet, and Bess knew better than to expect him to rouse himself in the middle of the night for her sake.

Still, though, he wasn’t entirely oblivious, and maybe she gave him less credit than he deserved because that surprised her a little. He wasn’t exactly the sensitive type, not like she was, and it took a lot for him to notice someone else’s discomfort; she didn’t expect him to see the restlessness in her any more than he usually did, at least not until she drifted off and stopped listening to him again. And yet, when light broke through the gaps in their tent and he yawned and stirred and rolled over, he only had to look at her to see the discomfiture behind her eyes. It only took a glance, just one, and when he sighed and shook his head it wasn’t with impatience or frustration but with that rare depth of compassion that she wished the others could see as often as she did.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and her heart flooded with warmth at the sight of him, wringing his hands and looking awkward.

It was just like him, she thought fondly, to be so uncomfortable about something so simple as showing a little empathy. He never did know what to do when she had a bad moment, never knew what to say or how to make her feel better, never knew anything at all. It didn’t matter if she was sad or scared or sick, or if she just wanted him to sit down and listen to her for a spell; anything that deviated the least little bit from what he expected was completely beyond his comprehension, and it sent him into a spiral of self-inflicted panic.

He was a politician, with a sharp legal mind and a quick tongue and absolutely no idea how to deal with things that weren’t word-perfect. He could charm an audience of a hundred if he had to, but once he stepped out of the light and into a world without scripts or choreography suddenly he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was like a spoiled child, floundering and sulking when something didn’t go his way, and it wasn’t exactly selfish but Bess understood all too well why some of the others might see it that way. He just didn’t know how to cope with reality, that was all, and if she was honest she could name a few dozen other station folk who had the same problem. Still, though, he cared and he tried, and even though he wasn’t very good at it, the effort meant more to her than anything. Let Devon and the others say what they liked about him; she knew who he was, and she knew that he wished he was better.

“You’re sweet, Morgan,” she said aloud, apropos of nothing, and he went rigid with fear, seeming to take the unexpected affection as affirmation that something really was wrong.

“Oh God,” he cried. “What is it?”

She thought of her dreams, of how she’d woken up shaking and horrified, of how she’d sought comfort in the press of his body and how he’d slept on oblivious. She looked at him, at the horror on his face, watched as he mentally scrambled for the right words to say, going through every possible explanation for why she might have slept badly, every possibly night terror that might have haunted her. He really was sweet, she thought, even if he didn’t really know how to show it properly.

“Don’t be silly,” she chided, with a smile that came far easier than she expected it to. “You’re panicking yourself over nothing, Morgan, like always. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s real sweet. But it’s also misplaced, so quit your worrying.”

He swallowed, like he didn’t really believe her, and she recognised the same look she’d seen on True’s face the previous night, albeit for different reasons, both so desperate to believe her but not quite able to. “So nothing’s wrong?”

“Nope.” Sometimes a lie was kinder than the truth, for everyone. Even the devout knew that. “Everything’s just fine.”

His entire body went slack with relief. He looked like he’d just been given the all-clear from some fatal disease, or found water right on the brink of dehydration, like the world would have ended if she’d confessed to not being as perfectly wonderful as he wanted her to be. Part of her was a little affronted by that — heaven forbid there come a day when there really was something wrong — but most of her understood that, in his own self-involved way, he was just showing how much he cared, how much she meant to him that even the least little thing was enough to send him into a near-meltdown.

“Good,” he said. “Then let’s go and find some breakfast before those damn kids steal everything that’s edible.”

—

Those damn kids didn’t steal anything, of course, but that didn’t stop Morgan from spending the rest of the morning complaining about them.

“I’m telling you, Bess,” he ranted midway through the day, loud enough for half the camp to hear. “If we run out of rations halfway to New Pacifica, Devon’s got no-one but herself to blame.” He threw up his arms in what she assumed was a vain attempt at punctuating his point. “That kid of hers gets through ten times his weight at every meal. And the Danziger girl’s even worse…”

Bess sighed. “They’re kids, Morgan,” she reminded him. “And they don’t eat half as much as you do.”

He bristled at that, but couldn’t very well deny it. “Well, I’m a grown man,” he grumbled. “I need to keep my strength up if they expect me to lug all their worthless possessions across this hunk of rock. Those kids don’t do anything but eat all our food and take up space. If you ask me, we should put them both to work. Make them do some of the heavy lifting for once. They’re going to eat us out of house and home before too long, anyway, and the least they can do is pull their own weight once in a while.”

“They’re _kids_ , Morgan,” Bess said again, tired and frustrated. “It’s bad enough that they’re stuck here at all. You really want to deprive them of what little joy they get?”

“Why not?” he muttered, characteristically resistant to any opinion that didn’t run precisely parallel with his own. “No-one thought twice before depriving me of my joy, did they? And I’m worth ten of either of those brats.”

“Well, now, I’m not so sure about that…” she said, mostly to herself.

“I knew you’d take their side!”

“This isn’t about taking sides,” she snapped, rising to the bait even as she knew better. “God, Morgan, would you listen to yourself?”

It was like talking to a stone. “Well, if they’d just pull their weight a little bit…” Bess opened her mouth to argue again, to reinforce her point, but he didn’t give her the chance. “Look,” he said, voice lower but no less impassioned. “All I’m saying is, it’s not fair that they get to run around like they own the whole damn planet while the rest of us have to do all the hard work. We’re all supposed to be equals out here, aren’t we? Isn’t that what you people keep going on about?” He threw up his hands. “But, hey, I guess equality doesn’t apply to the boss’s kid.”

Bess sighed again. “Morgan…”

“No, no.” His arms dropped down to his sides. “You’re right, my dear, as always. Let the precious little darlings frolic in the flowers while the rest of us work ourselves to death out here.”

“You watch that mouth of yours, Morgan Martin.”

The sharpness of her tone caught them both by surprise, anger swelling unpleasantly in her chest. She thought of Earth, of scars carved out of people’s faces, of pain and death and survival, of grown men begging for death, clawing at the earth, of so many awful things all for the want of some rocks, and resented her husband for understanding so little.

“Bess…” he started, but she had no intention of hearing him out.

“Working hard for the first time in your life is not the same as working yourself to death,” she told him acidly. “So don’t you dare go talking like it is.”

His expression wavered just a little, righteous indignation giving way to real hurt, and she hated how weak she was, how quick to feel sorry for him even in this. It was frustrating, the way he really believed what he was saying, that a little manual labour and a few hours’ walking really did count as working himself to death. He really did believe that, and it made her angry that she felt so bad even when she was right. He was so childish, more so than True and Uly put together, and Bess wished she had the strength inside to chastise him like the petulant creature, but she didn’t. She loved him too much, and even in something as infuriating as this, it still hurt to see him in pain.

“Look,” she said, gentler. “It’s really not as bad as all that. A little bit of heavy lifting never hurt anyone, and there’s plenty of supplies to go around right now, so stop worrying so much about what might happen somewhere down the line. Kids don’t get to be kids for very long, Morgan, so let ’em stay that way for a while longer. If things get bad and push comes to shove, I’m sure they’ll pitch in.”

“And if they don’t?”

Bess closed her eyes, took a deep calming breath and said, very slowly, “Then there are worse things than carrying a little extra weight.”

 _Better you than them,_ she thought, but knew better than to say that out loud.

This time he was the one who sighed, but it was much heavier than hers, and though he’d slept through the night and she hadn’t he suddenly sounded much more tired than she was too. She groaned, hating herself for giving in, and softened when she saw how utterly wretched he looked. It was hard to stay mad at him when he looked at her like that, and harder still to try and talk any kind sense into him, even when she knew it was the right thing to do, even when she knew that she was right and he was wrong. He really did feel victimised by all of this, and it was so hard to use common sense when he was pouting like a wounded child.

That was the thing about Morgan: everything was always so personal, always such a big deal; there was always someone out to get him, and usually it was everyone. If anything went wrong in his life, he would shut down entirely, utterly unable to cope with even the least little curveball; one harsh word from someone he saw as an ally, and he’d crawl up inside his VR gear for hours, hiding like a turtle in its shell, desperately trying to protect himself from imaginary attacks he saw coming at him from all sides. She knew that wasn’t good, knew it was probably a sign of a much bigger problem, but she couldn’t bring herself to do anything about it. Not because she didn’t see or didn’t understand or didn’t care, but because she did all three of those things, too much and too deeply, and she couldn’t bear to hurt him more than he already was.

He was always so devastated when he looked at her like that, so helpless, so much like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders — this world and the one they’d left behind too — and she knew that it was wrong to encourage that kind of behaviour, but how was she supposed to tell him to man up and square those shoulders when he looked so much like they were about to break?

It would be so much easier if he’d just get angry about it, if he’d just lose his temper and spit a little vitriol like her father and his friends used to when things went wrong down in the mines. Anger was easy, and she’d learned from an early age how to deal with that, but misery and sorrow and the hopeless futility of a man who always believed himself the victim was something else entirely. Morgan wasn’t the kind to get angry; it simply wasn’t his way, and that made it difficult for her to deal with him.

Bess was used to a very different kind of misery, a different kind of frustration. Where she came from, grown men weren’t ashamed to duke out their problems or scream their lungs raw if it would help them feel better about an injustice; it was always better take a swing, even just at a chunk of rock, than bottle up all of that resentment inside and waiting for it to turn to poison. She was used to a world where people looked their problems in the eye and faced them head-on, where things were dealt with fast, before they had a chance to fester into something rancid, something that could not be healed. She’d seen too many limbs lost from festering wounds, and she wished that Morgan would deal with his own before they rotted him away, but he was raised on those damned stations and he didn’t recognise the danger.

So, even when everything inside him was clearly crying out to do something, instead he just pouted and sulked and did nothing. He got sad and wretched and pathetic, complaining and sulking and whining and waiting for the world to get worse so he’d have a fresh supply of poison to drown in. It was a problem, the way he hid from his responsibilities or else resented them, and she wanted to make him deal with the things that scared him so much, but her heart broke too easily when she saw the pain on his face, and everything inside her softened.

“Morgan…” she started, gentler.

“This place will be the death of me, Bess,” he whispered, so tragic and so broken. “I know you think I’m being dramatic, but I’m not.” He shook his head, cutting her off before she had a chance to say anything. “This place is hell. It really is. These people, this planet, this life. I can’t be expected to just coast through and sing a happy song and think everything’s going to be all right when we’re half-starved and working ourselves to— to the bone. That’s not how things work, Bess. It’s not how _I_ work, and you should know me well enough by now to know that.”

“I do know it,” she said. “Of course I know it. But knowing it… well, it’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s all well and good feeling that way, but the situation is what it is, and it’s not going to change just because you want it to. We’re stuck here. At least for the time being we’re stuck here, and that’s it. That’s the situation. So we’ve just got to suck it up and live with it. Or try, at least.”

“And what if I can’t?” he cried. “Bess, I’m not cut out for this sort of life. I’m not like you. I wasn’t raised underground. I didn’t grow up eating dirt and scrounging for rocks, or whatever else you Earth people did. I grew up on the stations, with good food and clean water and a warm bed. I grew up _civilised_ , Bess… and civilised people aren’t supposed to live like this.”

“No-one is,” Bess said, very quietly. “Until they have to.”


	4. Chapter 4

She got the rest of the morning mostly to herself.

Morgan ranted a little more, but he wore himself out pretty quickly. Maybe she’d taken the fight out of him with her harsh realities, or maybe he’d just grown bored of venting his frustrations to someone who wasn’t sympathetic enough. Whatever the reason, he quickly lost patience with her, and eventually stalked off. She heard him muttering as he went, something about making formal introductions to the group’s newest member, and she couldn’t help thinking that perhaps someone should warn Gaal of what was coming for him.

In truth, she rather suspected that he just wanted to bring the unsuspecting astronaut around to his way of thinking before Devon and the rest got too close and tried to make a decent human being out of him. That was Morgan’s way, and he was very good at it, creeping and crawling under people’s skin and turning them into what he wanted before someone else had a chance to try. It was one of the reasons why he was so successful at what he did, and one of the reasons why he’d so easily won the heart of an Earth miner’s daughter.

Strange how different things were now. Once upon a time he’d wrapped her up so tight in that charm that she’d given up everything she knew for him… and now, barely two years later, she found that could scarcely wait for him to leave so she could have a little peace and quiet. Strange, and a little sad too.

It wasn’t always that way. She never used to count the moments until he left her alone, pray for a moment or two to catch her breath and her temper, relish the time she had to herself almost more than the time she had with him. At the beginning, way back when he first started talking about bringing her to the stations with him, she would have gladly spent every waking minute by his side, would have gladly wasted days upon days just listening to him talk, dreaming of all the things he talked about, imagining herself by his side. He had charmed her good and proper, and she’d swallowed every line he’d fed her because charm — like everything else on Earth — was in woefully short supply.

To a simple Earth girl, Morgan Martin was exciting. He was exotic, clean and clever, so different from the darkness and the dirt of the mines or the blood and the sweat of the miners. That was all she’d ever known, all she’d ever been, and when he looked at her like he couldn’t understand what a girl like her was doing in a place like that, she’d shivered hot all over. He’d seen her as something more than the place she’d come from, and it wasn’t until much later that she realised it was only because he thought so little of the place she called home. Still, though, it translated well, like he saw something beautiful in her, something that she couldn’t see in herself. He saw her as a precious stone, rare and valuable, something he wanted to claim and keep for himself forever. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before, and she would have given up so much more than her heritage for the man who did.

That, at least, hadn’t changed. He still looked at her that way sometimes, still seemed awestruck and dazzled when she smiled, still blushed and looked at the floor when she paid him a compliment. Whatever else she might say about him, whatever anyone might say about the two of them, they still had that. Even now, even out here on this planet that he loathed so much, he still looked at her like she was carved from something priceless and perfect; even here, where he hated everything, he still had enough of himself left to remember how much he loved her. There were a great many things she doubted in him, but she never doubted how he felt about her.

She let herself remember that as she watched him skulk away, back slumped and shoulders hunched. Morgan was far from perfect, and as his wife she was the first to admit that… but then, she wasn’t perfect either. She talked too much and thought too little, put her foot into her mouth too often and didn’t know anything about anything. Hell, if it was as simple as measuring, she was a whole lot less perfect than he was.

But then, really, wasn’t that true of everyone? There wasn’t a human soul on this planet, or on Earth or the stations or anywhere that was truly perfect. Nobody was untouched by some sin or another, nobody so innocent that they hadn’t done something wrong once or twice or a few dozen times, and at least some of Morgan’s imperfections washed themselves away when he looked at her like that. His diatribes would burn themselves out in due time, just like they always did, but the stars in his eyes would not. At least for today, that was enough.

Besides, she rather doubted that he would have much success in talking to Gaal, even if he did manage to track him down and turn on that famed Morgan Martin charm. Bess didn’t know any more about their mysterious new friend than her husband did — in fact, she was pretty sure she knew a whole lot less — but she’d heard Devon Adair murmuring not too long ago that she was hoping to corner him herself, maybe talk him into joining the group for good, and if she got to him before Morgan did, then he might as well give up hope right now. Devon might not have his politician’s charisma, but what she lacked in tactics she made up for with her good intentions, and Bess suspected that a long-lost astronaut would probably find Devon rather more his kind of people than Morgan.

Truth be told, though she felt guilty to think that way, she kind of hoped that was the case; if Gaal was going to listen to someone, it wouldn’t do well for anyone if it was Morgan. Bess would be the first to point out that Devon Adair had her share of faults too, and not all of them as small as she would have them all believe, but at least her heart was in the right place. If nothing else, she meant well, and she was receptive to criticism, and on days like this, that was a whole lot more than Bess could say for her husband.

It did get her thinking, though. The gleam in Morgan’s eye as he stalked off to find their newfound friend, the rigid lines of Devon’s back as she talked about him, the way she and the others had reacted last night as he told his story. It brought the embarrassment back to the surface for a moment, reigniting the shame as she remembered to her own pitiful contribution to the discussion — _“a real honest-to-god astronaut?”_ — and she flushed all over again. Was it any wonder that they looked at her like she was stupid, when that was all she had to offer? Was it any wonder that Morgan’s starry-eyed affection was so rare lately, when that was what she gave him to work with?

Was it any wonder, too, that she was so quick to defend True and Uly when Morgan tried to attack them for daring to be free and innocent? Was it any wonder that she would gravitate to their side, support them above even her own husband, when he treated her so much like them, when they all did? It made her angry, frustrated with them, Morgan and Devon and the rest of them, the ones who were supposed to be her equals, who looked at her in the same way they looked at their children. With the kids, at least, the derision softened sometimes into understanding — they were so young, after all, and who could expect a child to understand such complicated things? — but with Bess their eyes were always hard. _You should know better_ , they seemed to say, like it was her fault she was stupid. And, hell, maybe it was.

She didn’t know the first thing about Gaal, she realised. She didn’t know the first thing about most things, but this morning, with Morgan and Devon both so desperate to get him on their side, that particular gap in her knowledge felt especially wide. She didn’t know what it was to be an astronaut, didn’t even know what Pontel–7 meant. She’d sat there and listened along with the rest of them, nodded and smiled and looked thoughtful just like they had too, but she hadn’t understood. It hadn’t made sense to her like it had to them. She didn’t know what any of it meant, didn’t know which parts were important and which ones weren’t — were they vying for his attention because he was the first human they’d found here, or because he was a fancy astronaut? — and the only thing she’d got out of that meeting was a flush of humiliation and a lousy night’s sleep.

They’d all got something out of it, a kind of validation or a kind of excitement, even a kind of rapport. Devon had nodded, brain-wheels turning with all the ways this could be important for the group, or important for her personal mission, or important for someone or something. Morgan was the same, stiff and straight and thinking of what this meant for him, eyes on the potential prize of another ally in the group, someone to take his side at last against the unwashed masses. They’d all seen something in Gaal that spoke to them, even Doctor Heller with her thoughtful little noises; even Alonzo, who’d been pretty listless pretty much since the crash, had finally found a like-minded soul, someone who could understand the pain of being a pilot permanently grounded. All of them had seen something.

And maybe it really was just that Gaal was their first new face in this place, the first human being they’d found on this middle-of-nowhere planet. Maybe it was just that sense of kinship, of familiarity, of an old friend in a new place, but even if it was, it was still grounded in understanding, in empathy and knowledge. They didn’t need to ask if he really was an astronaut; they looked at him and they recognised it. They knew, because they knew what they were looking for, what they were looking at. They didn’t need to ask him what it meant, didn’t need to sit back in awe, because there was nothing awe-inspiring in a man doing a job. It was exactly the kind of basic comprehension that they all took for granted, rudimentary information that they couldn’t fathom someone else not knowing. It was all so easy to them, but to Bess it was a clamour in a language she’d never learned.

Devon and Morgan and the rest of them… they were falling over themselves trying to talk to him, trying to get into his good graces, trying to win him over and make him see their side of things, trying to get him into the group. They all wanted some part of him, sometimes the same part and sometimes different, but they’d all seen something. He was new, he was exciting, he was a kindred spirit for Devon and her doomed mission, a potential supporter for Morgan and his misery, a fellow flyboy for Alonzo or a scapegoat for Danziger to pin his judgement on. They all had their own ideas of what and who he was, and they all wanted a piece of that.

Bess, meanwhile, was still trying to figure out what the hell a real-life honest-to-God astronaut actually did.

—

Once again, she turned to Yale.

She wondered if he enjoyed explaining things to her, if he appreciated having a keen ear to listen. Morgan had explained what it was the Yales did, how they tutored rich kids, and she wondered how many of his students were attentive. Did little Uly sit through his lessons without making a sound, wide-eyed and enthralled by new slices of information, or did he shift and squirm in his seat, anxious for a chance to get out of there? And what about Devon, when she was young? Was she as stoic then as she was now, or was she as restless and reckless as little True Danziger?

Bess wasn’t a kid, and she wasn’t learning because she’d been told to. She wanted to know, wanted to understand, and there was a kind of softness in Yale’s voice as he talked her through the facts, space exploration and government contractors and all the rest of it, a kind of compassion, like he knew how desperately she wanted to be smarter than she was. From anyone else, it might have felt insulting, like another jab at her countless limitations, but from Yale — the only one in the group who didn’t see her that way — it felt more like encouragement. _Take it slow and steady,_ he seemed to be saying. _Nobody is judging you here._ And Bess, in her infinite innocence, believed him.

She hung on his every word, listening attentively, committing each syllable to memory, even the ones she couldn’t really make sense of. But then, he didn’t look like he expected her to make sense of everything, or even anything. That was one of the things she liked most about talking to him; he looked like he’d be perfectly happy to explain it all again if she asked, perfectly happy to spend the rest of the day spouting facts and figures for as long as she wanted him to, and it was so tempting to do just that, to while away what was left of the morning, and the whole afternoon as well, just listening and learning.

It wasn’t simple, though. Whatever the others might think, however easy it might seem to them, it wasn’t that way to her. She asked him about the Pontel–7 project, about the astronauts, and he explained in clipped and gentle sentences. He spoke softly and with precision, the kind of practiced articulacy that came with being a teacher, and yet all Bess heard were facts and figures, more of them than she’d learned in all her years of schooling down on Earth. So much new information made her head spin, and that left her feeling frustrated all over again. This stuff came so naturally to people like Morgan, people like Devon. It came so easily to all of them, even True, and that didn’t seem fair; they weren’t geniuses, only station folk, so why couldn’t she absorb it like they did? She finally had the opportunity, the resources, all the things they’d had all their lives, but she still couldn’t pick it up like they could.

Idly, she wondered what they’d think of her if they knew how many questions she’d asked Yale in the three and a half days that they’d been here, how much she’d begged him to teach her and how little of it she’d managed to absorb. She wondered what they’d think, what they’d say, if they’d roll their eyes and laugh and tell her not to bother, or if they’d muster a kind of grudging respect because she at least had the courage to try.

She wanted to believe that it would be the latter, that they’d at least acknowledge how much strength it took to know her failings and try to improve on them, but she knew them better than that. Well, she knew Morgan better than that, anyway, and it was hard to think good things about Devon when she looked at her the way she did, like it was an embarrassment simply having to share the same space. No, she knew better than to expect respect of any kind from them, even if she’d earned it; more likely they’d just shake their heads and quietly wonder why she was wasting Yale’s time on such silliness.

But then Yale touched her shoulder as he moved away, and all that uncertainty bled out of her. The contact was fleeting, but in it she imagined he was telling her it was all right to be stupid — more, that he was giving his blessing to ask for his help as much as she needed and as often as she wanted — and she felt her spine straighten a little. It didn’t matter what Morgan and the others thought of her, she decided, because she wasn’t asking for them. She was asking for herself, because she wanted to learn, because she wanted to know the things that they knew, the things they took for granted, and they could try to make her feel bad about it all they wanted, but it wouldn’t work. Maybe on the stations, but not here. Here they were alone, and she was not less than them any more.

Back on the stations, it had become second nature to feel like she was. She’d grown so accustomed to Morgan’s disapproval that it was almost by reflex that she bowed her head and mumbled apologies when he stared at her or rolled his eyes. She could see it coming from a mile away, the subtle shaking of his head and the too-casual remarks, the way he’d apologise to his friends out of the side of his mouth, like everything that defined her was another flaw that needed polishing. It was in the way he spoke to her, too, _“Why do you care so much anyway?”_ and _“Don’t I provide enough for you?”_ , like he couldn’t fathom why she’d be humiliated when he talked about her like she was less, like she should be ashamed of herself for wanting to be more. She was supposed to be whatever he told her was, because he provided for her, and that was supposed to be enough.

Well, he couldn’t provide for her out here, could he? And it wasn’t his place any more to tell her what she did and didn’t need to know.

Like everything else, that was something Bess would just have to learn for herself.

—

If Yale was to be believed, being a Pontel–7 astronaut was a lot like being an Earth miner.

A little more exotic and a lot more intelligent, but the basic principle was still the same. Get out there and find stuff. Find as much stuff as you can. The more stuff you find, the better your life is going to be when you get home. Keep thinking about that while you’re out there, when there’s nothing but darkness all around, when the world’s all shrunk down to one tiny prick of light. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about how alone you are, how dark it is, how many ways you could die. Don’t think about anything. Just find stuff. ’Cause if you don’t find anything… well, then, mister, you’re not getting paid. 

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense that these astronauts needed to know so much, that they needed to be so worldly, so smart and experienced and all those other things. An astronaut was someone to be respected, the kind of person that little kids dreamed they might grow up to be. No kid ever dreamed of becoming an Earth miner. Not even the ones who had to.

She tried to think only of the facts, to shut out the other things, the injustice and the unfairness, but they kept getting in the way. How was she supposed to memorise dates and names and facts and figures when all she could think about was how unfair it was that nobody in the group would give a damn if they’d rescued a miner instead of an astronaut. If it had been her father or one of his friends, if it had been someone from Earth, they would have probably argued in favour of leaving him behind, letting him rot out there alone. _‘We don’t have the resources to spare,’_ Devon would say, and Morgan would nod and pretend that he wasn’t just thinking about the size of his own breakfast.

Maybe that was unfair. She hoped it was. She hoped that basic compassion would win out over resourcefulness, but she doubted it. Survival could do terrible things to the human spirit, and no-one knew that better than a girl from Earth.

“What’re you talking about?”

The question caught her unawares. She hadn’t realised she’d been talking at all, and it took her a long moment to shut off the wanderings of her thoughts and snap herself back to the present. “I’m sorry?”

“You were talking to yourself.” It was True Danziger, looking even more edgy than usual.

“I was?” 

True nodded. There was an odd look on her face, a little distracted but also vaguely concerned, like she was in the middle of something and very much wanted to carry on but couldn’t quite quell her curiosity quickly enough. “You were saying all sorts of strange things,” she said, eyes narrowed. “Did you hit your head or something?”

“Of course not!” Bess chuckled at the look on her face. “I guess I was just thinking out loud, that’s all. You know, the way we do sometimes.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what possessed her to say ‘we’; so far as she knew, nobody else did that at all, but it felt a little safer to act like she wasn’t the only one who did, like it made the moment a little less awkward and a little more normal. At any rate, it seemed to have the right effect on True, who made a pleased sound in her throat, like it meant a great deal to her to be included. She still looked a little preoccupied, but she stuck around just the same because she was curious.

“What were you talking about?” she asked. “Or thinking about? You know, whichever.”

Bess smiled. “Oh, nothing much,” she evaded, not wanting to burden the girl with the darker thoughts she had about her people. “Yale was just telling me about our new friend Gaal, that’s all.”

“What about him?”

There was an odd hitch in True’s voice as she asked, an uncharacteristic sharpness that didn’t sound like the True Bess imagined she knew, as though the mention of the stranger’s name had dredged up some bitterness in her. Bess wondered if she was annoyed, angry that she’d been excluded from the meeting last night, frustrated that she hadn’t been introduced to the newcomer and upset that her opinion didn’t matter enough to be asked what she thought. If that was it, Bess supposed she couldn’t really blame her; child or not, True was still a part of the group, just like they all were, and if they were going to start bringing new folks into it, she had as much right as anyone else to know about it.

Not that it would matter if she did, Bess supposed; as much as Devon made a show of calling the group a democracy, nobody really did much listening at all. They all had their own opinions, their own agendas, their own motivation, and they all ran around blithely following whatever paths they’d picked out for themselves. They all wanted a piece of the new man, and all for different reasons, but instead of pooling their concerns and forming a united front to figure out where to go, they all came at him from their own side, all shooting from different angles. It wouldn’t surprise her if Gaal ran screaming from the group before too long, overwhelmed by the sound of so many conflicting voices saying so many conflicting things all at once.

She thought about saying that to True, telling her that it didn’t matter if she was allowed to listen in or not because nobody was listening to each other anyway. But then, she didn’t expect that True would understand that; she was smart as anything, but she was also very young, and the fine line between democracy and chaos in a group like this was too intricate for even the smartest ten-year-old to understand. Sometimes innocence was bliss, even if it did spawn a little jealousy now and then.

“Nothing interesting,” she said carefully. “He was just schooling me on those astronaut types and what they do. You know, boring stuff. You probably know all about it already.”

True’s eyes widened with surprise. “You mean you didn’t?”

Though she knew that it wasn’t really meant as an insult, just a simple question from someone who still didn’t hadn’t quite wrapped her head around the differences between them, still the words stung a little. It bothered her that it still did, that an innocuous question from a little girl who had no reason to know better could still cut, could still lash at the part of her that was too proud and too stubborn for its own good. She didn’t want it to hurt, and she definitely didn’t want True to see that it did, but she couldn’t stop it any more than she could have stopped herself from feeling so old and so changed when she woke from cold sleep.

That was another down-side of life with Morgan, she supposed. She’d spent so long surrounded by station folk who thought only a good education could make a good person, so long surrounded by people like him, people like Devon, so long being conditioned to think of herself a certain way that she could get all fired up by a simple question. Of course it wasn’t True’s fault that the rest of her people weren’t as innocent as she was, and it definitely wasn’t her fault that Bess was more sensitive than she should be at her age, but still a little of the hurt must have shone through because True noticed it and hung her head.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled quickly, sensing the faux pas even if she didn’t quite realise what it was. “Did I say something bad?”

“Oh…” Bess sighed, then forced a warm smile. “No, of course you didn’t, True. It’s just… well, there wasn’t much need for that kind of learning where I grew up. So no, I didn’t know.”

“Really?” Her voice wavered, like she couldn’t figure out whether to be cynical or envious. “Didn’t you go to school?”

“Of course we did,” Bess said, swallowing another sigh and twisting it into a laugh. “But it was a different kind of school. Everything was different down there, you know? So we learned different things because our lives were different.”

“What kind of things?” True asked.

It was the first time, Bess realised, that someone had asked about her upbringing with interest and awe in their eyes instead of disgust. True wasn’t asking _‘How did you survive without a civilised education?’_ or _‘Why? Weren’t you good enough to learn the things we did?’_. She just wanted to know what was different and why, and when Bess indulged her by explaining it, she found that it soothed a little of the lingering hurt to her pride.

“Well,” she said. “We got our letters and our numbers and all the rest of it, of course. But, you know, history and science and all that stuff just took up time we didn’t have. And besides, it’s not like we were itching to get up there among the stars. Far as we knew, that just wasn’t an option for us, so why’d we want to waste our time learning about it? We had different priorities, or at least our folks did… and I guess in the end they figured that all that fancy learning would’ve just gotten in the way of what was really important.”

“Like what?”

 _Like staying alive,_ Bess thought, but she didn’t want to burden True with something like that. “Oh, I dunno,” she said instead, shrugging it off like it was no big deal, like survival wasn’t so different from living at all. “Finding food, keeping warm, that sort of thing. Not much room for dreaming big when you’re a thousand metres under the ground.”

“That sounds sad,” True murmured.

Bess acknowledged that with a tilt of her head, not quite affirmation but not entirely denial either. “Sometimes it was,” she said simply. “And sometimes it wasn’t. Most of the time… well, most of the time, it was just life.”

True looked very thoughtful. There was a kind of sorrow in her now, overshadowing the curiosity almost completely and laying waste to the distractedness. She looked like she’d just learned of a terrible injustice, like she wished she could turn back time and make the Earth a better place to live, like she thought there was anything one little girl could do to change over two thousand years’ worth of destruction. It was a futile thought, of course, but a touching one, and the look on her face was so sincere and so heartfelt that it stole Bess’s breath.

She wasn’t used to seeing that kind of sympathy in people, the kind that truly wished things could be better. She was used to pity, second-hand embarrassment, had even received an awkward _“there, there”_ from a particularly high-level friend of Morgan’s once. But that was very different to what she saw in True now, the simple sadness of a child who just wanted to know why someone else’s life was less fair than her own.

It tasted strange, sweet in one moment and a little sour in the next. Bess had never thought of her life as something to feel sorry for, and it felt strange to hear True calling it sad, stranger still to see that sadness reflected in her eyes, so open and so honest. Her life was a hard one, and filled with pain, but she’d never really thought of it as tragic, and it wasn’t until she’d moved to the stations and seen life there for herself that she’d wondered if maybe it really was unfair. Growing up, it really had just been life. Just _life_ , nothing more and nothing less.

There was a lot to be said for living on Earth, a lot to be said for a life in the depths of what True thought was so sad. What they lacked in food and resources, they made up for in love and camaraderie, and if her time with Morgan on the stations was anything to go by that was something people like True sorely lacked in their own lives. John Danziger seemed like a halfway decent guy, at least most most of the time, and she could tell that he tried his hardest to be a decent father as well, but the distance between himself and his daughter was so wide that it broke Bess’s heart.

How to tell her that, though? How to tell her that all the things she’d lacked just made her so much more aware of the things those station folk lacked too? How to tell a little girl who thought her life was so hard that it was, just not in the way she thought? How to explain that even Death could be as welcome as an old friend if the need was great enough and there were no other options? It was so much more complicated than astronauts and exploration, and she didn’t know where to begin.

In the end, she didn’t have to, because True cut her off before she had a chance to try. Her eyes were big and bright, shining in the hazy warmth, and though they still swam with sorrow there was a kind of hope shimmering behind them now too.

“I think I was wrong,” she said.

“About what?” Bess asked gently.

True breathed out, slow and thoughtful. “When I said you don’t know very much. I think I was wrong about that.” She mustered an apologetic smile, and Bess drank down the sentiment like fresh clean water. “I think you know a lot, Bess.”

Bess smiled. She thought of astronauts and miners, of exploration and discovery, of darkness and death. She thought of children like herself who learned to survive before they learned to read or write, and children like True who had already learned so much and yet had nothing but loneliness to show for it.

She thought of Morgan, so gorged on his own selfishness that he was starving, and of Devon Adair who would not let go of her son’s illness even after he was healed. She thought of the things they did and the things they felt, the way they lived and what life meant to them; they all were so busy convincing themselves that they needed more, so sure that life was so unfair, and none of them ever stopped to take stock of what they already had. Devon never noticed the stars in Uly’s eyes when he walked and ran and laughed, only the clouds that used to obscure them. Morgan never noticed that his plate was full before he started eating, only that it was empty after he was finished. They never saw what was right, only what might go wrong.

That was the problem with being smart, Bess supposed. The burden of knowing too many things, of understanding what might be bad even in the best things. Too much learning and not enough experience. They learned numbers because it made them smart; Bess had learned numbers so that she’d known how many days a water supply might last. But the others had never needed to think about that, never needed to question. Morgan didn’t know how to endure an empty stomach because he’d never had one, and so it terrified him. Devon had only ever seen sickness in Uly’s eyes, and she didn’t trust anything else. The two of them, and all the others… they knew so much about everything, but they didn’t know what it meant to be satisfied with what they had, content with just enough. They were all so busy trying to fight their misery that they couldn’t see they weren’t really miserable at all.

Bess saw it, though, and she knew. She knew how to be satisfied, how to be grateful, how to appreciate what she had even if it was nothing. Bess knew it; it was the one thing she had that they didn’t, that insight burned into her by experience. She knew the limits of the human body and the limits of the human spirit. She knew what was enough, because she had survived time and time again on so much less. She knew that it wouldn’t kill Morgan to skip a meal once in a while, and she knew how important it was for a parent like Devon to relish her son’s health and happiness while he had them. She knew that too little could be so much more precious than too much, and she knew how important it was to cling to the simple pleasures. All her life she’d known only dirt and dust and death, but if there was one thing to be learned from a life underground it was that the sky could be so beautiful.

She knew all of those things. But did it really count as _knowing_?

“Nah,” she said aloud, feeling exposed and a little embarrassed. “Only thing I know is that I don’t know anything.”

True flashed a brilliant grin. “Well, then, at least you know that.”

She made it sound like it was worth so much to know so little, like there was something precious in being ignorance. Just like the other night, she made it sound like Bess really did have something to offer simply by admitting that she didn’t have anything at all. There was an innocence in the girl, a kind of idealism that was almost painful; it was so different to Devon and Morgan and the others, so different to all the station folk she’d ever met, and while it made her sad to think that it might die with her youth, it gave her a new kind of hope to know that it would’ve died a whole lot earlier if they’d still been back on the stations right now.

Back there, there was no doubt in Bess’s mind that life and experience would put that familiar disdain on True’s face long before puberty ever could. Even her father had it, and his type was probably the closest thing to a real working-class that the stations had, and if a hard-working blue-collar fella like John Danziger could still look at a stupid girl from Earth with the same sense of superiority that Devon and Morgan did, what hope was there for his kid? If they’d met back there, Bess knew that it would be no time at all before True’s bright eyes and sweet words reshaped themselves into the same head-shaking and eye-rolling that Bess saw in everyone else.

But they weren’t on the stations now. They were out here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by impossible earth-people and astronauts who fell out of the sky and lived alone for fifteen years. They were on G889, as far away from Morgan’s precious civilisation as they could be, and maybe there was a chance for someone like True to grow up in a place like this and never have to think badly of a stupid Earth girl. This new world had already healed Uly of his physical defects; who was to say that it might not heal the rest of them of their prejudices too, or at least keep new ones from growing? Who was to say that in this place, knowing nothing really was something useful?

Looking at True gave Bess hope for something better, a happier world for them both. A world where True could grow up slower, climbing trees and skinning knees, a world where she could live like a kid for a while, where she could learn to survive without having to sacrifice the precious pieces of her childhood. A world where someone like Bess, who knew nothing, might finally have something to offer the smart and knowledgeable station folk that were all around her, a world where what little she did know had value and what little she had to say was useful. This was a new world, and the old world’s rules might not apply so strictly here. If someone as smart and full of potential as True could look at someone as stupid as Bess and think that knowing nothing was something to be proud of… well, maybe there was some hope for the rest of them to make something out of nothing too.

True’s smile was sweet and eager, like she really had learned something here, like she knew something now that she hadn’t before, and that it was Bess who had taught her. She smiled like Bess really was worth something, like she really was important, and Bess smiled back in the same way because for the first time in her life she had the freedom to imagine that she could be.


	5. Chapter 5

Precious moments never last, though, and less than ten minutes later all hell broke loose.

It all happened so quickly. One second Bess was watching with a goofy little grin on her face as True waved and scampered off, and the next she was screaming her lungs out as her husband died gurgling in her arms. It was as quick as that, as sharp and as sudden, and as she sobbed and wailed and struggled to think through the clamour of words and people all around her she realised that she had no idea how the hell they’d got there.

She had a vague awareness of what was going on, recognised the voices and the people, but she couldn’t piece together the fragments of why and where and how, couldn’t reconcile what she was feeling now with what she’d felt just a moment ago. Hadn’t things just been pleasant? Hadn’t she just been feeling good? What the hell just happened? She could hear people talking, knew that in some mangled corner of her brain she knew everything, but she couldn’t process it. The smile on her face a moment ago, vague echoes of talking to True, of talking to Yale, of how they both made her feel like something worthwhile… and now this. Seemingly out of nowhere, _this_. Fear and pain and horror all sneaking up to strangle her. Pain and the memory of death and Morgan, her husband, her Morgan lying there and dying in her arms. How had this happened? How did they get here?

She remembered little fragments, but nothing tangible and nothing useful. Morgan and True fighting over something stupid — _food_ , she remembered dizzily; it was always about food with Morgan — and True howling for Morgan to leave her stuff alone. But that was nothing new, was it? They fought all the time; hell, Morgan fought with everyone, and wasn’t True always so over-protective of her things? But that wasn’t all; she remembered her own, too, voice high and shrill as she tried to intervene, anger surging in her chest, taking the girl’s side over her husband’s just as he’d told her she would. Then it all dissolved into chaos, all a blur of senselessness and screams. She remembered the pain gurgling in Morgan’s throat, the fight choked out of him in less than a heartbeat, the koba’s barb sticking out of his hand, and the world slammed into her stomach as she realised what it all meant.

Everyone was crowding around them. Doctor Heller and John Danziger tried to help, tried everything they knew to keep Morgan alive, but Bess didn’t need to look up from his face to know that it wouldn’t work. She could feel him fighting, could feel him losing, and she was sure that she could feel the life draining out of him. It was over. She didn’t need Julia Heller to tell her so; she’d seen death more times in her life than the doctor had in her career, and she knew enough to recognise it in an instant. She saw it now in the stillness of Morgan’s face now, in the way he didn’t struggle even though that was the one thing he did better than anyone, in the way he wouldn’t move at all.

It was just like her father always said. Death really was like an old friend, and not even twenty-two light years is far enough to run away from a friend who wants to find you. She’d given up everything to come to this place, outrun and abandoned everyone and everything she’d ever known, and wasn’t it just typical that Death was the only baggage thing she’d brought along? She should’ve known better, she supposed, than to think she had escaped just because she wasn’t there when it happened to Commander O’Neill, should’ve known better than to let herself believe she might have gotten away for good. Death catches up with everyone in the end, and like all good people he pays special attention to his friends. She must’ve been crazy to imagine that she’d never see him again just because she wasn’t on Earth any more.

Things were supposed to be different here. Wasn’t that why Devon had brought Uly out here in the first place? Wasn’t that why they’d all followed her? Things were supposed to be different; children were supposed to thrive and people were supposed to have hope, and it wasn’t supposed to be like Earth at all. Survival was one thing, but death was all too familiar, and Bess couldn’t help think that this was wrong. It was wrong, and it was cruel, and why her? Why her, and why him; why _them_ , when she was the one person in this place who had been here before?

It wasn’t so different here at all. Just like on Earth, Death was always there, always lurking over her shoulder, waiting and waiting and waiting. It had been that way on Earth, shadows cut through by screams and sobs and the scent of blood, bad dreams cut down by realities that were so much worse, and life cut short by an old friend who knew what was best for a soul in pain. That was then, but it was now as well, and it felt so raw, so visceral. The air was a little hotter, the ground a little drier, but the words were the same, and the sobs that tore from her lungs were the same sobs she’d heard a thousand times before. It was the same thing, her old friend Death doing the same thing he always did, tearing her away from the people who mattered, taking them away when she needed them most, and all she could do was cry and wish that she didn’t already know what it felt like.

“Your husband will pull through.”

That was Gaal, and the part of Bess that wasn’t already lost to the grief and the pain wanted so desperately to believe what it was hearing. But it wasn’t possible; they all knew that, and Bess’s angry heart cried out in indignation that a man could be so smart and so respected — an _astronaut_ — and still not know what death looked like. Was this where all that fancy station learning got you? Stupid and blithe and hurtful, saying things that weren’t true because you’d spent so long in space you forgot what a dead body looked like?

“Please don’t say that, Gaal.” Julia was already saying so, voice quaking with anger and frustration, and Bess wanted to thank her for saying what she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come through the tears and the raw-throated howling, but she felt the same way, the agony washing over her in waves as Julia said those terrible words, the words that they all knew so well already, but couldn’t bear to hear, the the heartbreak and the horror and the terrible truth. “He’s dead.”

 _I know he’s dead,_ she wanted to say. _You don’t have to say it, I know it, I’m not that stupid, I know what death looks like._

She couldn’t say that, though. She couldn’t say anything at all. Her throat was closed and aching, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she couldn’t do anything but whimper and gasp and hear her husband’s name ricocheting off the walls of her head over and over again, _Morgan Morgan Morgan_ , like that would somehow undo what had happened. It was all she could think, all she knew, and she wanted to scream it out loud so the rest of them could see how much this hurt, so they’d know like she did was death was, and how it worked.

But she couldn’t do that either. Not that it mattered, because Gaal wasn’t listening to her anyway. He wasn’t listening to any of them, not to Julia who was a doctor and knew how life worked, not to Bess who knew how death dead, not to Devon or Danziger or any of them. He wouldn’t even listen to Morgan’s chest and hear the hollow silence where his heart should be. He just kept right on talking like none of those things mattered, kept right on telling her — telling all of them — that it wasn’t true, that they were wrong, that Morgan wasn’t dead. He would be just fine, he said, like none of this was really happening, like it was all just some terrible dream. It was so cruel, so painful, and so heartbreaking to listen to him and wish that he was right; his voice was so cloying, so sickeningly sympathetic, and the weight of his hand upon her shoulder was more than she could bear just then.

“He will wake up,” he said. “Give him time.”

 _How can you say that?_ she thought, desperate to believe him and just as desperate not to. _How can you be so sure? How can you stand there and tell me that my husband isn’t dead when I can see for myself that he is? I know it. I know him and I know death and I know it. I know it, I know it, I know it. How can you take away the only thing in the world that I know?_

“You mean it’s not fatal?”

That was John Danziger, direct and to-the-point as always, and Bess wanted to ask him whatever happened to the cynicism, the way he’d stormed out that first night Gaal showed up, the way he made it clear that he didn’t believe a word he said. _‘What happened to all of that?’_ , she wanted to scream, but all her screams had been swallowed up by sobs. She hunched forward, cradling her husband’s head in her hands, and tried to block out the sound of everyone else talking over her.

They were talking over each other too, not just her. Over and around each other, across each other, and about the only thing that Bess could make out through the maelstrom of voices and tones and things that weren’t Morgan was the rising sense of urgency. This was important, at least to them, and the rhythm of it kicked inside her chest like a second heartbeat, filling the void where Morgan’s used to pulse in tandem. She couldn’t make sense of the words, couldn’t make sense of anything at all, but they all sounded so serious, so stricken, so much like they believed those senseless and stupid words, like they really believed Morgan wasn’t dead, like they thought any of this could possibly be true. 

But why, then, if they believed that, weren’t they crowding around her? Why weren’t they crouched over Morgan like she was? Why weren’t they working on him, searching for a way to bring him back, trawling for that elusive heartbeat? Why were they still talking? Why were they standing up?

The answer punched her in the face, breathless and panic-stricken, in Devon Adair’s voice. “Our commander was stung two days ago…”

And there it was. That was why they were suddenly moving, all urgency and desperation. That was why they were running around, shouting at each other, and Bess was sure they had a viable reason for doing what they were doing but right at that moment she didn’t care. Their precious commander was dead and buried, gone two days since; even if the koba sting hadn’t killed him, then being buried sure as hell would, so what was the point? They’d made their peace with that, hadn’t they? Why go back now? Why break their hearts all over again, and break hers too?

The anger that rose up in her was violent, uncontrollable. Morgan was lying there dead at their feet, and they were rushing around like it was so much more important to run off half-cocked after a man who’d been laid to rest two days ago. The hell with Morgan lying cold and lifeless and dead at their feet, the hell with his grieving widow, the hell with them both. Who cared about a bureaucrat and a stupid Earth girl when there was someone more valuable out there? Who cared about the life ebbing away in front of them when there was a chance of saving someone better?

She tried to stand, to stop them, to scream at them if that was what it took, but she couldn’t do it. Her legs wouldn’t hold her weight and she couldn’t let go of Morgan for long enough to reach out and grab one of them as they flashed past. Danziger and Devon were already taking action, shouting orders and making plans to move on, to retrace their steps, to go back, and Bess wanted to run after them, to take Danziger by the collar and Devon by the arms and shout until they saw how futile it was. _You can’t undo death,_ she thought, and tried to scream. _You can’t go back._

But they were. They were packing and preparing and planning, and she could hear it going on around her but she couldn’t see anything but Morgan. They were going back, all of them, but Bess wasn’t going anywhere at all. She was stuck, tear-streaked and dizzy, and the world around her was a blur of motion and voices and sound, of horror and hope, and why was she alone? Why didn’t they care?

She did scream then, raw and wasted, a nonsense howl of agony and anger that lacked all the things they needed to hear, all the words that were so important. _You can’t go back!_ , she thought, but the sound that came out of her throat was nothing like that at all. Like her, like Morgan, it was empty and lifeless.

“Bess…”

That was Doctor Heller. Julia. Whatever she wanted to go by. She said her name again, and then a third time, slow and strong and steady, like she could drag the hysteria out of her. Bess tried to focus, tried to emulate the rhythm of her voice with the rhythm of her breathing, tried to stop herself from screaming, but when she said her name for a third time all she could hear were those words again — _“He’s dead”_. She’d said it just a moment ago, or at least it felt that way, but now that same clipped voice was saying something completely different.

“Help him,” she cried, another rasping scream, and her throat was so raw from so much pain that the words slashed like shards of rock, rough and sharp. “You’re a doctor! Help him!”

“Bess.” Julia’s voice was so effortlessly calm. Bess wanted to throttle her for that, but she still couldn’t move. “Bess, listen to me.” 

Her hands were firm and strong, framing the sides of her face and tilting upwards until Bess had no choice but to meet her eyes. Bess struggled weakly; she didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to see her at all. She didn’t want to see anything other than her husband, her Morgan, the body lying lifeless and lightless under her knees. She didn’t want to look away, didn’t want to abandon him like everyone else had, didn’t want to leave him alone. She couldn’t be like them, couldn’t cast aside one soul for another. Bess had seen more corpses and coffins than she could count, and the most tragic were always the ones with no-one to carry them. She would not let that happen to Morgan. He deserved better than that. Everyone deserved better than that.

“Help him,” she said again; she could feel another scream tearing at her throat, but she didn’t have the strength to let it rise.

“Listen to me.” There were tremors in Julia’s voice too, small quakes cutting into the calm. It made her sound smaller, a little less assured and a little more human. “Morgan will be fine, Bess. I promise. But right now we need to—”

“I don’t care,” she cried. “I don’t care what you need to do. I don’t care about your commander. I just want my husband.”

“I know.” Julia swallowed. “I know you do. But Gaal says he’ll be better in a day or two, and we have to take his word on that. Now, I know it’s hard for you to hear, but we don’t have time to deal with this right now. We have Gaal’s word that his life isn’t in immediate danger, and we have to trust to that. At least for right now—”

“He’s my husband.” Bess’s head was full of static, disbelief coloured by shock. “My _husband_.”

“I know that,” Julia said again, tighter. “And I promise I will do everything I can for him. But first we have to get moving.”

Bess shook her head, numb and dumb. “Please…” 

She had no idea what she was asking for, not that it really mattered. The word tasted bitter on her tongue, strange and wrong, and she realised it had been a long time since she’d said it. It came as second nature to be polite back on Earth, but things were different on the stations, and Morgan had tried very hard to purge her of those silly manners. _“It makes you sound weak,”_ he used to tell her, but what did it matter if she sounded weak now, when that was how she felt? What did it matter if she sounded weak, if that was what it took to bring him back to her? And so, with those words ringing bitterly in her head, she said it again, and then again, over and over until Julia leaned forward and pressed a delicate finger to her lips.

“He’s not in any danger,” she told her again. “Please, understand what I’m telling you. Morgan is not in any danger right now, but Commander O’Neill is. And now is not the time to start second-guessing—”

“No!” She sounded so pitiful, so hopeless and lost and _stupid_ , but she couldn’t stop. _“Understand what I’m telling you,”_ Julia had said, but Bess couldn’t understand anything at all. “No. He’s already dead. He died already. He died, and you buried him, and then you moved on. You moved on, you had to move on. That’s how it works. You can’t go back. Dead is dead, and you can’t go back.” She jerked away from Julia’s hands, hunched desperately over Morgan. “You station folk think you can have everything. You think you can make the world what you want it to be. But you can’t. You _can’t_.”

“Nobody’s trying to do that,” Julia said, and when she sighed it was born of frustration instead of sympathy. “Bess, I know you’re upset. It’s completely understandable. But we need to go. Now, I promise to take care of Morgan, but I don’t have the time or the resources to take care of you as well.”

Bess stiffened. “I don’t need you to take care of me,” she gritted out through the rusted-out pain in her throat. “I just need you to take care of my husband.” She forced herself to look up, ignored the sound of Morgan’s voice in the back of her head telling her not to sound weak, not to look weak, not to be weak in front of other people. “Please. Please, don’t let him die alone.”

This time, Julia gripped her hands instead of her face, pulling them away from her husband and holding them tight. “He’s not going to die,” she promised. “Do you understand me? Do you understand anything that Gaal said to you?” Bess could feel the impatience in her, swelling towards frustration, and she knew what was coming next long before it did. It always boiled down to the same thing, the same old story, the same question asked again and again and again: “Do you understand anything at all?”

Bess closed her eyes. “Death,” she rasped. “I understand death.”

Julia cursed under her breath, then forced herself to soften. “Bess. Listen to me. There’s nothing we can do for Morgan right now. I can monitor his condition and keep an eye on him, and you have my word that I will do that… but beyond that, it’s just a matter of waiting for him to wake up. That’s all we can do.”

“I can’t…” Bess started, but gave up after that, because there were too many things she couldn’t do, and she didn’t know where to begin.

Julia sighed again. “That’s all right. But can you at least try to stay calm?” She set her jaw, steadying herself as much as Bess. “Look, Bess, I know this isn’t easy, but it is important. You have my word as a physician that Morgan is not in any immediate danger. All right? You have my word that I will not let him die. But time is of the essence right now, and we need to get moving. So even if you can’t do anything else right now, it is very, very important you take a nice deep breath and calm down. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Calm down. It sounded impossible, incomprehensible, a strange alien concept that she’d left behind twenty-two light-years away. How could Julia expect her to calm down when Morgan was still lifeless and limp in her arms, when she could still feel her old friend Death breathing down her neck, when the only hope she had was the garbled promise of a long-forgotten astronaut? How could anyone expect her to calm down when everything she cared about was slipping away and there was nothing she could do but sit and wait and pray?

“Could you?” she asked, choking back another wave of tears. “Could you take a deep breath and calm down if you were sitting here? Could you stay calm if it was your husband lying there in your arms and you were the only one who cared?”

This time, it was Julia who stiffened. “You’re not the only one who cares,” she said. “We all do.”

That was a lie, and an insult. Bess tried to climb to her feet, maybe even take a swing if she could, but her legs were shaky and would not hold her weight. She collapsed almost before she was upright, falling back over Morgan’s body with a desperate sob. She was so angry, so utterly furious, but she didn’t have enough left inside her to do anything with it. She’d seen the same thing happen countless times to countless grieving widows — even once or twice to grieving children — though she’d never expected to find it happening to her as well. Anger, blinding as a headache, a flash of light behind her eyes that burned out quickly because there was nothing inside of her to feed it. She sobbed again, hard, and felt the salt soaking through the skin of Morgan’s neck.

“You’re a doctor…” she whispered, not expecting Julia to hear her at all. “You’re supposed to be a doctor…”

“I am a doctor.” Her hand was strong, fingers tight on Bess’s arm. “You know I am.”

“Then how can you do this to him?” she demanded, looking up and squinting through the veil of tears to make out Julia’s face. “How can you station folk be so cruel? I know you don’t like him, but—”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Julia snapped, voice sharp even as she didn’t bother trying to deny it. Her grip tightened on Bess’s arm for a moment, then went slack as she took her own advice and willed herself to calm down. “Bess. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re in shock, and you’re not thinking clearly.”

Bess raised her aching head, staring dumbly down at Morgan. Face pale and still, features twisted in the last vestiges of the pain that had claimed him, lifeless and breathless and soundless, death made manifest on the one face she’d thought was safe. She remembered the miners, pain wracking their features as they choked and gurgled their last, a horrible end for so many good people, the agony unrelenting until their final breath. She remembered the relief when the end finally came, peace at last after so much agony; death was always so much easier than dying, she thought numbly, and wondered if Morgan felt that pull too. Was he silently screaming for it all to end, rasping out nonsense pleas for death to claim him and take away the pain? Did he want the touch of an old friend? Was that the alternative, if he wasn’t truly dead, an endless kind of dying? And wasn’t that worse, in its own way? Maybe it would be better if they didn’t know. Maybe it would be better if—

“I can’t,” she said again, and this time there was only one thing she couldn’t do. “I can’t wish for him to die.”

If Julia was surprised by the change of direction, she didn’t show it. “You won’t have to.”

“You don’t understand…” Bess told her, and hoped against hope that she would never have to. “You’ve never had to see… never had to watch…” She choked on another wave of tears. “I can’t. I can’t. Please…”

Julia squeezed her hand, but didn’t bother trying to argue any more. “All right,” she said again, no doubt because it was the only thing she could say that broke through. “Would you like me to get you a sedative?” Her tone made it clear that it was far more of a prescription than a suggestion, though she still went through the motions of offering rather than ordering. “Just a mild one, something to take the edge off what you’re feeling. You’re no good to Morgan like this, and you’re no good to the group, either.”

“I don’t care about the group,” Bess said, but even as she heard the words leave her mouth she knew that they weren’t hers. She closed her eyes, shut out the sight of Morgan’s face, of his judgement, of all the ways he would handle this differently. 

“You know that’s not true,” Julia told her, quite firmly. “I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but even I know that much about you. I’ve seen the way you talk to Yale, to little True Danziger, to anyone who’ll listen to you. You’re not like Morgan at all, Bess, and I know that you do care very much about the rest of us.” Her fingertips brushed the backs of Bess’s knuckles, almost tender for a heartbeat or two, but then she pulled back and she was a doctor once again. “Now. I’m going to go and get you a sedative, and you’re going to take it. You’re going to take it, and you’re going to feel better. Then, when you’ve calmed down a bit, you’re going to do what you do best and take care of your husband. All right?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, simple rose to her feet and disappeared. Bess had no idea how long she was gone for, and she didn’t care. A moment, a couple of minutes, a few hours, what difference did it make? All she knew was that for what seemed like forever, it was just her and Morgan, just the two of them, the way it used to be, and the part of her that wasn’t drowning in panic and fear and pain struggled to wrap itself around the idea of him not being there any more, the horrible question of what would happen if Julia and Gaal were wrong about this. It would be just her, just Bess, a stupid Earth girl alone on a planet full of station folk.

“You can’t die,” she whispered to salt-stains on Morgan’s face. “Please, Morgan. You can’t. You can’t leave me alone with them. I won’t survive out here with these people, Morgan, not without you. You can’t leave me.”

His silence was deafening, but cut off before it had a chance to drive her mad. Julia was too efficient for her own good, or at least it felt that way to Bess, and when she appeared again it was as though she’d never left at all.

“I’m sorry that took so long,” she said, like Bess had any idea at all how long it had been.

She reached for her arm again, and this time there was a clinical sobriety to the touch of her fingers. It was a doctor’s touch, the cool and distant kind of contact that came with an inoculation or a mouthful of medicine. Medical care was a luxury most people couldn’t afford on Earth, but even the poorest among them scrounged funds enough for their children when they needed it. Bess doubted that her father had ever seen a doctor in his life, but he’d made damn sure that his daughter had the care she needed when it mattered, and she had felt clinical touches like this plenty of times when she was young.

The press of Julia’s fingers sent her back there, muscle memory kicking in, reminding her of dark days in darker places, of dark things happening all around her, and she imagined the prick of a needle in the place of Julia’s fancy equipment.

“I don’t want a sedative,” she said, plaintive and small, a little girl all over again. “I just want people to stop dying.”

“I know you do,” Julia said with another weary sigh. “But like I keep trying to tell you, he’s not going to die. I promise you that. He’ll be just fine, given time, but until that happens we have to be patient.”

Her breath was heavy, weighted with duty and responsibility, warm against the side of Bess’s face. The sedative looked like a peace offering in her hand, a way of saying _‘I’m sorry I can’t do more’_ , or maybe just a way of washing her hands of the need to try. _“Stay calm,”_ she said, like it was so easy. _“Calm down,”_ like it was Bess’s fault she couldn’t breathe. _“He’s not going to die,”_ and just like that she’d stripped her of the one thing she knew. Death was supposed to be an old friend — her friend, her only one — but in this place it seemed that she couldn’t even rely on him.

“Bess,” Julia said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but this really is the best I can do right now, for both of you.”

Bess swallowed another sob. “It’s not enough,” she cried. “It’s not enough.”

“I know it’s not.” Julia’s voice was thick. “And I’m sorry.”


	6. Chapter 6

The sedative, mild though it was, did its job a little too well.

It shut off the pain and the panic just like Julia said it would, calming the hysteria at least enough to remind her of who she was supposed to be, but it also shut off everything else as well. It shut off her empathy, her compassion, almost every kind of feeling she’d ever had, and left her numb and empty inside. It was a strange feeling, hollow and blank and lost, and though the tears flowed as freely as they had before, now they fell with a kind of strange dissociation, not in sobs or screams, but with a kind of listless automation that was outside of her control. Her head felt thick and foggy, like she’d just woken up from a long sleep, and every time she looked down at the broken husk of her husband, instead of horror or grief or agony all she felt was alone.

They retraced their steps, the whole group, dragging everything they could back to the original crash site, and while everyone else fanned out to search for their missing commander, Bess stayed with Morgan. She did the best she could to stay out of everyone’s way, but her priorities were not the same as theirs and she wouldn’t let them move her. Julia was quick set up a space for them as soon as they reached their destination, a quiet little place right next to her own tent with a promise that she’d come running if they needed anything. Bess knew better than to test that, though, and at least for the most part she and Morgan had the little tent entirely to themselves.

It was strange, being in the midst of a group like that and yet so completely isolated. By herself, all Bess could do was sit and think, and in the end — because it was the only sanctuary she had left — she turned to prayer. 

That was another of her talents, another of the few futile things that she did better than the rest of them. It was familiar, kind of comfortable, or at least as close to it as she could get while sitting over her husband’s lifeless body. It made her think of home again, of Earth, because that was how they always dealt with tragedy back there. Promises were cheap and far too easily broken, but prayers held real power. The words infused themselves with faith, and faith brought with it a kind of desperate strength. To the praying yes, but also the prayed for, the dying souls who had nothing else.

Bess had learned the power of prayer almost from the day she was born. She’d learned the words long before she started school and learned what they were, their meaning and their history and why they were so important. Prayer was powerful, a part of death and a part of life, and that power wrapped itself around her again now as she looked down at the man she loved and wondered which of those things she was praying for. Life or death, whichever of the two caused him the least pain. The words were a blanket, warm and soft and familiar, soothing the parts of her that Julia’s sedative had numbed and filling the space between her breaths with memories of faith and home and friendship.

Prayer was like an old friend, too. Not in the same way that death was, destructive in one moment and generous in the next, but not too far different from it either. At the very least, the two of them often went hand-in-hand, the pain of dying and the power of prayer. Grief and faith and loss were like brothers to each other, each with its own quiet voice, each offering something new to the old familiar words. Back home, it was a kind of unity, a chorus of like-minded souls all whispering the same words, the hopeful and the hopeless, turning simple prayers into something truly holy. On Earth, nobody prayed alone.

Not here, though. Here, Bess did pray alone, and when she whispered those old familiar words there were no like-minded souls to join in and turn them into something more. There was only Bess, alone with her dying husband and her dying faith.

—

“Bess?”

The sound of her name was unwelcome, but not entirely unexpected. She’d heard the rustling of the tent flap, the hesitant footsteps coming up behind her, the short exhale as they stopped, but she’d assumed that it was just Julia stopping by to check on Morgan again. She did that every now and then, glancing at her medical machines, studying the readouts, and murmuring jargon to herself. Occasionally she’d take the time to rest a supportive hand on Bess’s shoulder, but she never said anything, and she never asked how either of them were. Her visits were short, clipped and professional just like she was, and before Bess had a chance to ask her what all her self-directed murmuring meant she was gone, rushing off to play wet-nurse to Devon Adair and her perfectly healthy son.

It wasn’t Julia this time, though, but that didn’t make it any better. It was True Danziger, and the sound of that high young voice struck Bess square in the chest, blasting her with a horrible sensation that she couldn’t quite grasp. It might have been anger, maybe even rage, but there wasn’t enough feeling inside of her to let it manifest properly. Julia’s sedative was still humming in her veins, muting the parts of her that could feel things — good or bad — and the empty place inside of her was too big to let the unpleasant thing manifest into something tangible.

She didn’t flinch, didn’t move at all, and when she heard her own voice acknowledge with a tear-hoarse “Yes?”, it sounded as distant and hollow as her body felt.

The word was a misnomer, she thought. _Sedative_. She didn’t feel sedate at all; she just felt empty, like someone had locked up all of her feelings in a very small space, like she could hear them scratching and crying to get out but didn’t have the key to open up the box and let them free. They were still there, but held down and trapped, and she was hyper-aware of her own body, of True’s behind her, of everything. Her chest felt tight, but her hands were steady as she lowered them to her knees; her wedding ring had cut into the edges of her fingers, leaving little half-moon marks where they’d pressed together, but she didn’t even feel it. She didn’t feel anything at all.

Behind her, True swallowed down a deep breath. Bess could feel the regret pouring off her, guilt and sorrow and grief and so many other things that she had no right to feel. “I know you probably don’t care…” she blurted out in a halting half-confession, “but I just wanted to say I feel bad.”

 _So that’s it, then_ , Bess thought, and sighed. Her head was still fuzzy, but her thoughts were as clear as they’d ever been, as clinical as Julia’s and just as rational. _That’s why you’re here. Not for me, not for Morgan. Not for the people you’ve hurt, oh no. You’re here because you feel bad. You’re here to ease your little conscience, aren’t you? You want to make yourself feel better. Not me or Morgan. Just you. Poor little True. It’s all about you, isn’t it? It’s all about you._

She wanted to say all of that that. She wanted to turn around and drown that guilt in cold and cruel reality, to take True’s face in her hands and force her to look at Morgan, force her to and see the damage she’d wrought, the lives she’d ruined, the terrible thing she’d done and the consequences of that thing for people who were not True Danziger. _‘You feel bad?’_ , she wanted to scream. _‘How the hell do you think he feels?’_

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. The void inside her was too great, and her heart was still too empty to harden into something stronger. She wished she hadn’t let Julia calm her down, wished she’d rejected that stupid sedative, because ‘calm’ was the last thing she wanted to feel right now.

She wanted to be angry, wanted to be furious, wanted to feed that unpleasant feeling inside of her. She wanted to hate True for what she’d done, wanted to blame her for what had happened to Morgan, wanted to shout at her for her selfishness in coming here now. She wanted to make her feel really bad, truly bad, the kind of bad that Morgan had felt in the moment his body gave out, the kind of bad that Bess had felt as she held him and watched him and felt the life bleed out of him. She wanted to make True understand what feeling bad really meant, and why it wasn’t enough to come here and try to make herself feel better. She wanted to say all those things, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even look at her.

“You’re right, True.” The words spilled out of her before she could think. “I don’t care.”

It felt so futile to say that, hollow and empty just like she was, and even if she’d managed to find some passion in the way she said it, it wasn’t as simple as that anyway. It was true enough that she didn’t care about the things True was talking about, but the crux of it was so much messier. She didn’t care about her little pet rodent, her guilt and regret, didn’t care how bad she felt about everything she’d done. She didn’t care about her explanations or her reasons; she didn’t care why she chose to keep the koba even after learning how dangerous they were, and she didn’t care about her precious conscience, the real reason why she was wasting both of their time talking about how bad she felt. She didn’t care about anything True had to say at all.

But she did care. She cared about Morgan, her husband, the man lying motionless in the bed beside her, the man that none of the others had thought to come and visit. She cared about Morgan, _her Morgan_ , and the fact that Gaal’s and Julia’s reassurances rang pretty damn hollow when his eyes were still shut and he wasn’t breathing. Morgan, who might yet be in agony even as he looked so still, who might yet be dying even if he wasn’t dead. Morgan wasn’t perfect — Bess would be the first to admit that — but he was a man just the same, a man made of flesh and blood and bone, who lived and breathed and thought and felt just like the rest of them, who did not deserve to die this way. He was still _her_ man, and Bess cared very deeply about the fact that nobody else cared at all.

“I hope Morgan gets better,” True whispered.

 _I’m sure you do_ , Bess thought, with a tough of bitterness that was all her hollow heart could muster. _But for him or for yourself?_

Aloud, she just said, “Thank you,” and let the insincerity ring out like a death-knell.

It was so hard. It was so hard to care when nobody else did, so hard when the only one who showed any interest at all was a selfish little girl just trying to lighten the weight of her own conscience. It was so hard to keep herself distant when the only other sounds in this hellish sickroom were her own prayers flitting about like lightning-bugs inside her head. It was so hard not to turn around and accept the bittersweet apology, the cold comfort that True was offering, the worthless words. It was so hard not to swallow them all down, futile and pointless as they were, so hard not to gorge herself on them when she was so starved for sympathy that it felt like she was dying too. It was so hard to be so alone.

Maybe True did care. Maybe she did want Morgan to get better. Or maybe she really was just trying to make herself feel less bad. In the end, it didn’t really matter; even selfish sympathy still tasted sweet when it was the only kind you got, and it lit up a little corner of Bess’s hollow heart that she could taste anything at all. Whatever her reasons were for coming here, True was still the only one who had done so. That, if nothing else, had to be worth something.

And so, at long last, Bess turned to face her, turned to look into the face of the little girl who had caused so much misery, stared right at her and drank down all that bad feeling, all that guilt and shame and sorrow. There were tears in True’s eyes, and she wasn’t looking at Morgan. Bess couldn’t tell if it was shame or dread that turned her face away, the horror of what she’d done or the terror of what might happen to him. This was all her fault, and they both knew it; Bess didn’t need to say the words, and she didn’t really want to anyway. It wouldn’t help Morgan to point fingers, even if it was justified, and True was clever enough to know the repercussions of what she’d done. Whether she could look at him or not, she knew what he was going through. Selfish or not, she was still smart, and Bess felt a flush of unpleasant heat as she remembered how vast the distance was between them. She the stupid Earth girl, and True the super-smart station kid who didn’t think she was so stupid after all. It tugged at her insides, a kind of sorrow that even the sedative couldn’t fully suppress.

It was doubly cruel because True was the only one who thought like that too. She wasn’t like Yale, who knew precisely how stupid Bess was but chose not to judge her for it, who applauded her for embracing her own stupidity and for seeking him out to fill the gaps in her learning. Yale understood and respected stupidity, but True acted like it wasn’t there at all. She looked at her like she was so much smarter than she really was, like she could see the potential shining bright inside Bess’s head, like she thought she could really be worth something if she just let herself try. Bess remembered the way they’d talked, not ten minutes before everything went so wrong; True had said _“I think you know a lot,”_ and though she knew it wasn’t true, still the words had lit her up inside.

That had all changed now, and Bess found that couldn’t believe anything True said any more. She couldn’t believe that _“I feel bad”_ truly meant _‘I’m sorry’_ , and she couldn’t believe her when she said that she hoped Morgan got better. She wanted to believe her, wanted to put a little of her broken faith into this this smart-but-selfish little girl, the child who had seen so much potential in a stupid Earth girl. She wanted to have faith in her like she had faith in the god who would not hear her prayers, wanted to strengthen her faith in both of those things because it hurt to feel it wavering, but she couldn’t. All she could see in those tear-streaked eyes was a child who would not accept the damage she had done, a spoiled little station kid who thought that she could ignore death if she closed her eyes tight and didn’t look at it.

Bess had seen death more than a dozen times by the time she was True’s age, and she didn’t have the luxury of turning her face away or hiding from it. It swelled like anger, in a way that she couldn’t quite explain, to see such wilful ignorance in someone who was so intelligent. She wasn’t entirely sure that it was anger at all, because the sedative was still numbing all the parts of her that could pick apart one feeling from another, but it felt a little like it. Maybe it was just envy, though, the miserable jealousy left over from the little girl she used to be, a little girl who could never be as smart as True, but never as innocent either.

“You’re a smart person, True.” She said it very softly, but it still stung like a koba’s barb to hear those words here and now, in this soundless sickroom and for this reason; True was smart, yes, but she was also free to be foolish, free to be selfish, free to be everything that Bess never could be. She would always be worth more, would always be _better_ , even when Bess was right and True was wrong. “I’m trusting that you don’t have to learn your lesson a third time.”

The look on True’s face cut deep, so she looked away. It was too painful to see the innocence still paving over the cracks of guilt, the way she still wouldn’t look at Morgan, the way she still couldn’t accept the damage she’d done even as she tried to own up to it. It hurt too much to think of their earlier conversations, snatches of moments that had almost been connection, of how smart True was and how little Bess knew, of how True was the only one who thought that knowing nothing was not the same as being stupid, the way she could pick apart knowledge and understanding and intelligence.

It hurt, like a kind of betrayal, and Bess couldn’t bear to look at her until she atoned properly. She wanted to make her see, to acknowledge the depth of what she’d done, to turn her face towards Morgan’s lifeless body and force her to say that it was her doing. She wanted her to understand that death was something real, that it wasn’t some abstract concept, a thing that happened but then got wished away. She wanted True to see death through the eyes of an Earth girl, to see an old friend who would not be outrun, to see just how deeply something like this might hurt to someone who knew death as well as Bess did. She wanted to teach her all of that, because it was the only thing she did know, and True was the only one who would listen.

But still she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she knew what lay underneath all the guilt and the shame and the selfishness, underneath the denial and the refusal to accept, underneath all the things that made this so awful. She knew that underneath all that was just True. True, who was just a little girl, silly and selfish and small. She was a child, that was all, the kind of child that Bess had never been, blessed with an innocence that she would never know and a knowledge that she would never understand. She was so very young, and no matter what she’d done, no matter the consequences of her selfishness, Bess could not bring herself to take from her the one thing that made them so wonderfully and terribly different. When she was True’s age, Bess was already all grown up; she would not make True grow up too.

So instead she watched Morgan. She studied the lines on his face, the marks of strain edging his eyes, all the parts of him she’d taken for granted so many times, committing them to memory now just as she had on their wedding night. The man she loved, the man nobody else even liked. Nobody would care if Gaal was wrong, Bess knew, and that cut deeper than anything else.

Back on Earth, everyone grieved for everyone. Dead was dead, and the weight of mourning was shared equally among the living. Even when folks didn’t know the name of the body being put to rest, still they would always stop to pay their respects, nodding with downcast eyes at the sad figures in tattered black clothing, the ones left behind. Everybody’s life was forfeit down in those dark tunnels; nobody took their own life for granted, or anyone else’s. No man ever turned their back on another, alive or dead, even if he wasn’t well liked; it went without saying that everyone would take a moment to think of them and think of the things they’d done. Even the worst among them had something positive to offer, even if it was just the families they left behind, and so they were mourned right there beside the very best. Nobody ever thought _‘it could’ve been worse’_ , or even _‘it could’ve been me’_ , because they all understood that the next time it might well be.

It wasn’t like that here, or even on the stations. Up there, out here, it was all about who was better, who was worth more; nobody liked Morgan Martin, and they’d already deconstructed in their heads a choice between him and Commander O’Neill. The emptiness of the tent was proof enough of what they’d decided, and Bess wished she could still be angry about that, but a part of her knew that Morgan would have probably done the very same thing if it had been someone else lying there. Station folk were bred to cull everything that wasn’t important to them, keeping space only for the things that they wanted, the things they needed, the things they cared for. Selfishness, like True’s but so much more destructive. They never stopped to realise that someone else might love the things they hated, and they never stopped to think that every life should be mourned when it ended.

If Morgan died here, Bess would be the only one to mourn, and knowing that made her feel more alone than anything she’d ever known.

Behind her, True cleared her throat again. There was a kind of hushed nervousness to her breathing now, like she was bracing herself for something that she knew was stupid, and the tiny part of Bess that was neither numb nor broken grew tense and bitter. She visualised the words forming in True’s throat, told herself that she knew exactly what was coming before the girl even said anything, already condemning her. Another poorly-worded apology, of course, meant more to soothe her own bruised ego than to balm Bess’s pain. She couldn’t bear the idea of going through that again, and it broke through to the rest of her, the numb and broken parts, and released in a weary sigh.

 _Go away, True_ , she thought. _Go back to your father. You’ve cleared your little conscience. Now go away and leave us be._

But she didn’t. She didn’t leave, and she didn’t try to apologise again. She just swallowed and whispered, in a voice so hopeful that it stole Bess’s breath, “Can I wait here with you?”

The question slammed into her, loosening the numbness and exposing the grief, raw and bloody beneath. A thousand replies spiralled in her head, each one more impassioned than the last, but she couldn’t give voice to any of them. She wanted to drive out the grief with anger, drive out everything until all she felt was furious. She wanted to take True by the shoulders and shake her, demand to know why, to ask how she could possibly think it would be a good idea if the first face Morgan saw when he woke up was hers. And then she wanted to take her face into her hands, hold her close and make her look at him, make her see that even when she was trying to do good, all that came out of her was selfishness and poison.

More than any of that, though she just wanted to say ‘no’. _No, you can’t wait here. No, I don’t want you. No, I won’t let you near my husband. You’ve hurt him too much already, and I won’t allow your face to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up. No, no, no. Go back to your father. Wait with him, or with Yale or Uly, or anyone else who’ll have you. Wait anywhere you like, True, but not here. Not with us._

Aloud, she said, “Do you know how to pray?”

—

True didn’t know, but she tried just the same.

Honestly, that simple effort meant more to Bess than a thousand apologies ever could. Station folk didn’t often have the same call to faith that Earth folk did, because they didn’t have the same need for something to cling to. They weren’t so intimate with death, or even survival. They’d never had to pray for enough food or water, never had to pray for a friend to make it through the night, or for another to be freed from their suffering. It was hard to believe in something better when you couldn’t imagine anything more than what you had, and station folk never wanted for anything.

Sometimes it seemed to Bess that the whole point of the stations was for man to take the place of God, to give themselves everything they felt they deserved, everything they felt the divine had failed to provide. They didn’t pray because there was nothing to pray for, and they had no faith because there was nothing to have faith in. It had taken Bess a very long time to adapt to life among people who didn’t bow their heads at every meal, every morning, every minute… and it had taken Morgan longer still to adapt to life with a woman who did.

Bess didn’t know much about True’s life back on the stations, but she knew that it wasn’t nearly as good as Morgan’s. She worked too hard and thought too much to be as pampered and privileged as he was, but station life was still station life no matter the kind, and even a bad life up there came with enough food and water, a place to sleep and the safety to rest without fear. Though she clearly understood the value of hard work, Bess couldn’t imagine True ever having to pray for her next meal or for her father to make it through the night, or for any of the countless things she herself had prayed for all through her childhood. A hard life wasn’t the same as a life of hardship, and there was simply no reason to pray when the worst thing to worry about was working too hard and thinking too much.

Still, though she clearly didn’t understand, True was respectful and she tried her best to do what was expected of her. She was a quick study, in this as in everything else she did, learning the lines on Bess’s face like they held the secrets to the universe, and shadowing the shapes her mouth made to form the words. She echoed the lines she could remember, mulled over the ones she didn’t, and whispered along in piecemeal fractures when she had the courage and the confidence to try. Her smartness shone through, bright and attentive, and it was not long at all before she was murmuring the words in near-perfect rhythm.

For a time, it was enough. Bess prayed, and True echoed as best she could, and when she closed her eyes she could imagine that two thready voices was really a room full of acquaintances all united in holiness. For a time, if only a brief one, Bess let herself imagine that she was home, and that she was not alone.

Then, after a couple of blessed hours, True heaved a tired-sounding sigh. “Why?”

Bess opened her eyes, but kept them fixed on Morgan. “‘Why’ what?” she asked.

She heard True shuffling her feet, though whether it was from nervousness or restlessness it was hard to tell. “Why are we doing this?” She sounded almost apologetic, like she knew she was stepping on dangerous ground, broaching a potentially sacred subject, but was too curious to keep the question inside any longer. “It’s not going to make a difference, is it? He’s still…” She trailed off, awkward and uncomfortable, and Bess gave her a moment to compose herself. “I mean… well, if he’s going to get better, like Gaal said, then that’s going to happen anyway, right? It’s not changing anything to pray over him like this, is it?”

Bess swallowed. The sedative had long since worn off, but her emotions were ragged and rough. “No,” she said hoarsely. “It’s not changing anything.”

“So why are we doing it?” True pressed. The words were cold but her voice was warm. “I mean… I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

“I know you don’t,” Bess said, then turned to face her, keeping her features still. “You’ve never had to pray for anything before, have you, True?”

True hung her head, looking almost ashamed. “No,” she confessed.

It was nothing less than she’d expected, but still it made her think. How to explain the power of prayer to someone who had no idea what it was to have nothing else? How to make True see that she didn’t understand because she couldn’t, that even her hard life was still sheltered and protected and safe? How to help someone like that comprehend a life with so little that even an abstract concept like faith could feel like having something?

She didn’t want to take away from True’s efforts here, the courage and respect it took to try even when she didn’t understand. She certainly didn’t want to sound harsh or cruel, not when the girl was trying so hard to do the right thing, to make good on her bad deeds with actions instead of words. And yet, at the same time, it wasn’t easy to paint over the resentment that seethed in her stomach, that unpleasant feeling in her chest, the ever-present fact that even with all her good intentions True was the reason they were praying in the first place.

It would be all too easy to tell her that she had no right to ask those questions, that she had no right to try and understand, to force herself into Bess’s private space and her private prayers, that she had no right to ask those questions and expect that Bess would stop everything to answer them. It was selfish and childish, yes, but it was still closer to maturity than anything else she’d done since she’d crept into the tent. True didn’t need to be lectured; she needed to learn — more, she _wanted_ to learn — and it made Bess feel important for the first time in her life to think that there might be something she could teach someone else.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, after a long moment. “Out here, to the tent. Why did you come out here to see me?”

She could see the confusion flickering like shadows across True’s face. She didn’t see the connection, Bess could tell, and if she wasn’t still so broken by the sight of her husband she might have almost smiled.

At long last, True took a breath. “Because I felt bad,” she said. “I felt bad for what happened to Morgan. And I thought…”

“You thought that coming here and apologising would make you feel better,” Bess told her. The words came out rather more accusatory than she’d intended, and True’s shoulders slumped with a weight of fresh guilt. Bess sighed, turning away, and bowed her head back over Morgan’s prone body. “You didn’t come here to make me feel better, True, did you? You came here to make _you_ feel better. You came here to clear your conscience and cleanse your soul, and you hoped that if I told you it was okay, then maybe you’d feel a little better inside yourself too. Am I right?”

True swallowed, breath hitching with tears. “Maybe. I don’t know.” She sighed, and there was more courage in the way she surrendered than there would have been in a thousand acts of defiance. “Yes. Yes, I felt bad, and I wanted to feel better, and I wanted you to tell me that it was okay. But I didn’t… I didn’t mean to, Bess. I didn’t mean to turn it into something like that. I didn’t mean to make it so…”

“…selfish?”

“Selfish,” True agreed sadly, and Bess turned around to face her, surprised in spite of herself by the honesty and integrity that it took to say the word out loud. “I didn’t mean to be so selfish, Bess. I didn’t mean to make it all about me and how I felt. I wanted to make _you_ feel better, not just me. I really did. Or… I don’t know… I thought I did. But all I could think about was how it was all my fault and how I couldn’t make you feel better when I was the one who’d made you feel so bad in the first place. It was all my fault, and I thought… I thought…”

“I know.” She whispered a fresh prayer, soft and low and personal, then looked to True again. “It’s hard to help someone, or even just to be there for them, when you’re feeling so bad inside yourself. It’s hard to be a good person when you feel like a bad one. I know that, True, and whatever else I might be feeling about you right now, I do understand.”

“You do?”

“I do.” She closed her eyes, imagined her father in Morgan’s place, a frightened little ten-year-old bowed over him just like this. “You see, True, that’s why we pray.” The past was still painful, but it was a sweet sort of pain, and the present one was worse. “At least, it’s why I do.”

“To make yourself feel better?”

Bess nodded, a flash of motion that felt like a moment in a confessional. “To make myself feel better.” She leaned over, pressed her lips to Morgan’s cold brow. “And sometimes because it’s the only thing I can do.”

“I know how that feels,” True said softly.

“No, you don’t.” Bess swallowed, kept her head bowed to hide the tears. “And I hope you never do, either. There’s no feeling in the world worse than helplessness, True. No feeling in the world, except maybe loneliness. And praying… well, sometimes it makes you feel a little less helpless, and sometimes it makes you feel a little less lonely. Hell, sometimes it just makes you feel a little less bad. And maybe that’s not much, but when it’s the only thing you’ve got…” Her breath hitched, and salt splashed onto Morgan’s face. “It makes you feel like maybe you’re doing something useful… like maybe you’re doing something good… something that’s not _nothing_. And when nothing is all you have, all you’ve ever had, all you know… well, something feels like a whole lot. Do you understand?”

True’s voice was hushed. “I think so.”

Her breathing was slow and even, rhythmic, and Bess let it guide her back towards a rhythm of her own. “Sometimes you have to make yourself feel better.” It felt like a secret shared, like something transcendental. “Sometimes you have to.”

True made a thoughtful sound. “I think Morgan would like that,” she said, and the words ignited a cold queasy feeling just below Bess’s chest. “I think he’d be glad that there’s something you can do to make yourself feel better while you wait for him to wake up.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” The bitterness shot through her voice, potent, before she had a chance to try and stem it. “He hates it. Hates that there’s something I have that he can’t touch, hates that there’s something that touches me and isn’t him.” Her fingertips trembled just a little where they rested over his hand, though whether the tremors stemmed from love or anger, or even from both, she had no idea. “He doesn’t understand what it means any better than you do, True. Only difference is, you’ve got the patience to ask about it. Morgan… he just doesn’t care.”

“That’s sad,” True murmured.

“Yes.” The word tasted almost like betrayal. “Truth be told, if he thought for a second that I was praying for him right now, he’d probably get back up that much quicker just to get me to stop.”

That was true, and it hurt like hell. It was just one more difference between them, but right now it felt so wide she couldn’t see the other side. Bess prayed for everything; she prayed for enough food, enough water, for strength and for solace, for all the things she’d never had and all the things she swore to never take for granted. She prayed because it was the only tie she had to the world she came from, the only thing she had left of the place that was her home, those words that had been wrapped around her head and her heart from the day she was born. She prayed because prayer was a part of her, as much as the dirt and the darkness were a part of her father. Even on the stations, even when there was plenty of everything, still she prayed because it was the one part of her home she couldn’t give up.

But Morgan didn’t pray at all. He didn’t believe in it, and he left the room whenever she bowed her head. It disgusted him, she knew, and not just because it was an inescapable reminder of where she’d come from, that underclass planet that he and his fellow smart people left behind so long ago. It disgusted him, because uncivilised people always disgusted civilised people, made them uncomfortable with unwanted reminders of what they used to be. Morgan didn’t like to think about the mud that humanity crawled out from, and he didn’t like to remember that there were patches of it still clinging to the woman he called his wife. It bothered him to know that all the station finery in the world wouldn’t clean her of those things, and that there was a part of her that didn’t want to be clean at all.

She was raw. She was raw and she was primal and she came from a place that he hated. She was of the Earth, and every time she prayed Morgan had no choice but to remember that.

“He doesn’t understand,” she sighed, more to herself than to True. “And he doesn’t want to.”

When she opened her eyes again, a few tearful moments later, True’s were big and bright. “Well, I want to,” she said. “I know I’m not Morgan, and I know you probably still don’t care, but I do.”

“Do you?” Bess asked, surprised by how much it meant to her. “Really?”

“Yes.” She leaned forward, eager and earnest and impossibly young. “I think you’re a smart person too, Bess. Even if you don’t know very much. Even if you really don’t know anything at all. I still think you’re smart. And I want to understand.”

Bess looked down at Morgan. She thought of all the times he rolled his eyes or sneered when she bowed her head in prayer, all the times he’d left the room rather than hear another reverent word, all the times he laughed when she stared in slack-jawed disbelief at a table full of food. She thought of all the ways he didn’t understand where she came from, all the ways he refused to understand what that world had made her, all the ways he didn’t know her at all. She thought of prayers and promises, of death and faith, two old friends so closely linked. She thought of all the ways he didn’t care, and all the ways True did, and wondered which of the two of them was really more selfish.

The air shifted as True moved closer, and Bess watched wordlessly as she clasped her hands and bowed her head, reverent and holy.

“Good,” she said, though she didn’t know why.

“I don’t believe in God,” True admitted, regret rich and heavy on her voice, so afraid of disappointing. “Will it still work?”

“Of course,” Bess said, though she didn’t really know; she had never prayed without faith, had never done anything without it, and she didn’t know how it felt. “You don’t have to believe in something bigger. You just have to believe in _something_. Doesn’t matter what. Your father, your future, your friends, anything you like. Anything you can think of that’s worth putting a little faith in.” She mustered a smile, but it stung to know that Morgan was lying there between them and that he wouldn’t approve. “If you can find something to believe in — really and truly, with all your heart — I promise you, the rest’ll take care of itself.”

“I’ll try.”

And she did. She didn’t waste either of their time with words, not any more, simply closed her eyes and prayed. Bess sat back and watched, studying the curve of her spine, the tension in her shoulders, the way her head dipped so low that it almost brushed Morgan’s chest. Eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly, breath hitching with helpless hope, in time with each new syllable. Bess remembered herself at that age, bowed low over another fading soul, a friend of her father’s or a father of a friend, praying for a swift recovery or a merciful end, praying because it was all she could do, all she knew, the only thing she understood.

True didn’t understand, but she was trying. Bess laid a hand on her shoulder, respect and forgiveness and empathy, and bowed her head too.


	7. Chapter 7

Recovery came in time, just as Gaal said it would, and not just for Morgan.

It was Bess who found Commander O’Neill, and the irony of that was not lost on her. She was the only one who hadn’t dropped everything to go searching for him, the only one who hadn’t turned the landscape upside-down. Devon and the others had become prisoners to their desperation, clinging to their need to do something, to be productive, and they had turned that desperation to action. It didn’t matter that their search was fruitless because they were at least doing something, where Bess — just as desperate as they were — could do nothing but sit by Morgan’s side and pray. While they trawled every inch of ground they could find, she could only sit with her hands clasped and her head bowed and nothing to fill her time but her own wretched thoughts and the hushed murmurs of a guilt-stricken girl.

True wasn’t exactly a source of strength, but she was a source of company and that counted for a whole lot when she was the only one. She asked questions every now and then, and tried to whisper along with the prayers that Bess taught her, but for the most part she stayed quiet. When the weight of worrying got too great and the tears came, little waves of choked-down emotion that caught in Bess’s throat and left salt tracks on her face, True didn’t say anything at all, but her hand was steady and strong at her back, and she was grateful for the contact.

She was grateful, too, when Morgan came around. Grateful for the moment itself, of course, but also grateful that she had someone to share it with. It was a fleeting moment, cut entirely too short, but it was a precious one, and she was glad that it had a witness. It felt fitting that True should share the joy with her, not just because she had been by Bess’s side the whole time, but also because she was the reason it had happened; grief and worry had washed away Bess’s resentment, and True’s willingness to bow her head and offer prayers that she didn’t believe had warmed her far more than any apologies could. True had earned the moment, the relief, the joy; most of all, she had earned the freedom it granted her, the weight of guilt lifted not entirely, but enough that she could stand straight again.

When the crash sounded outside, startling all three of them, it was by pure instinct that she left Morgan alone with True. It wasn’t until much later, long after the shock of finding Commander O’Neill alive and well, that she realised how far they’d both come from selfishness and a stubborn refusal to care.

It took a little time to settle the drama, to pass care of the shell-shocked commander over to Devon and the others who knew and cared for him, but when she finally returned to Morgan’s side he was still groggy and unfocused. He was clearly still trying to process what he’d been through, clearly still recovering from so many hours of comatose half-death, because when she beamed and dropped down into her chair and told him what had happened — that she had been the one to find their missing commander — all he mustered in response was a noncommittal grunt. Though he’d been unconscious for the best part of a day, he still looked utterly exhausted, like a man who hadn’t slept in over a week, and when he looked at her his eyes lacked the light she loved so well. He looked haunted, broken and hollow, and it tugged at her heart to think that the ordeal wasn’t over just because the danger had passed.

Truth be told, she didn’t know how to deal with something like that, the soul suffering that came after the body’s recovery. Where she came from, few men lived long enough to go through that, and when they did it was in the privacy of their own homes. Her father had been lucky enough to survive a fatal wound or two, but he was a gruff and stoic man, and he never wasted more time on feelings than he had to. He sucked in his gut, straightened his shoulders, and just got on with it; hell, most of the time, he was back down there in the dirt even before he’d fully healed up. Besides, even if his soul did suffer from what his body went through, he would never let his daughter see.

Morgan was nothing like her father, though, and he wasn’t like Bess either, who rode out her suffering quietly and hid it away in places that only she and God could see. Morgan was the kind who wore his heart on his sleeve, always happiest when he had something to complain about, but this was different. He had never been hurt, not truly, and he’d definitely never faced death before. He was a politician, a bureaucrat, locked up safe and secure in his big office with his big friends up on those big stations; like Devon and the others, he didn’t know the first thing about survival, or planet living, and that helplessness shone like a beacon in him now. That emptiness, that broken hollow place… it screamed at her that he didn’t know what he was feeling, that he couldn’t make sense of what had happened, what’d he’d been through, what it meant.

Bess didn’t press him to say anything. She just sat there with him in silence, wordless but always present, because she knew that sometimes silence was worth more than words. He didn’t need her to say anything, but he did need her to be there, to remind him that she was there, that he was alive, that neither of them were going to die tonight. She held his hand, touched his face, leaned back when he looked frightened; she took her cues from his body language and the lines on his face, and quietly tried to be what he needed.

After maybe three or four hours, deep into the darkest part of the night, he stirred a little. His eyes were bright, reflecting the dim artificial light, and she could see a dozen unvoiced feelings behind them. She smiled as best she could, let her fingertips graze his knuckles, and waited for him to speak first.

“Don’t you want to know?”

His voice was hoarse, rusted out from so long without saying anything, and she reached instinctively for a cup of water.

“Want to know what?”

His features twisted with betrayal. “What it was _like_!” he cried, like having to explain himself was the worst kind of insult. “I was _dead_ , Bess! Don’t you want to know what it was _like_?”

She thought of life on Earth, surrounded by pain and prayers and pleas, and looked away. “I know what it’s like, Morgan.”

She expected him to get angry at that, the way he often did when she reminded him of the world she came from, but he didn’t. He didn’t sulk or storm out or throw one of his usual pre-pubescent tantrums, or do any of the other things he usually did when he heard something he didn’t want to hear. He just kept right on staring at her with those big sad eyes, that same wounded expression he’d had when she didn’t realise straight away what he was asking for. Again, she felt the urge to say she was sorry, to fall on him and kiss him until she washed that look from his face, but he was so unlike himself, so subdued and quiet, that she couldn’t bring herself to say anything at all.

“I see,” he said after a long and weighted silence. “Well, I’m sorry if I’m boring you with my near-death experience…”

She sighed. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” It wasn’t much of an apology, and it didn’t seem to affect him at all. He didn’t move, and his expression didn’t change; it made her uncomfortable, the empty look in his eyes, and so she rushed on. “I just meant, I already know what it feels like to be at death’s door. I understand what you’re going through. My father—”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Bess, I’m not your father.” His eyes flashed a little, a not-so-subtle shade of the man she knew peeking through the haunted haze, and with it just a ghost of resentment. She should’ve known what was coming, had heard it a thousand times before, but it still landed like a blow when he sat up a little, looked her right in the eye and said, “I’m not like those people. I’m _civilised_.”

There it was again, that vicious and hateful word. It had haunted her ever since she agreed to leave Earth for the stations, haunted her still even out here in the middle of nowhere, and she hated it. _Civilised_ , the one thing she could never be. It cut deep, just like it always did, stinging and scathing, and when she shook her head and looked him in the eye it was with none of her usual empathy.

“Even civilised people die, Morgan.”

“Not like this!” he wailed, oblivious to the hurt in her voice. “Civilised people die in civilised ways. If we’re lucky we die old and grey, and even if we’re not we still die in a warm cozy bed surrounded by the people we love. We don’t get bitten to death by flea-ridden rodent beasts on some nowhere planet in the back-end of who-knows-where just because some stupid kid wanted a pet! Civilised people don’t die like that, Bess!”

It took everything she had to keep from reminding him that there were far worse ways to die than from a rodent bite, and that she’d seen at least a dozen of them in practice herself. She wanted to say it, wanted to strike out now, while he was weakened, while there was a chance that he might actually see the damage his words could do. She wanted to, and for a second she thought about it, but in the end she knew it would do no good. He was tired, and still processing what he’d been through, and now was not the time for that argument. And so, just like always, she put on a smile and pretended that his words didn’t hurt at all.

“Yes, dear,” she said, and it sounded just as sickly-sweet as if she meant it.

Like always, he took the words at face value, hollow as they were, and softened somewhat. He really was tired, and when he sank back against his pillow he looked just about ready to drop. “I’m sorry, Bess.” Somehow, he managed to make the apology sound utterly insincere and almost genuine at the same time. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I know you’re just trying to help…”

He didn’t say, _‘…in your silly little Earth way’_ , but of course he didn’t have to. She was his wife, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. She also knew better than to call him on it, at least right now, and opted instead to look away so that he wouldn’t see the flush on her face.

“It’s really not as bad as all that,” she said, putting on a happy voice and hoping she could get some of the false cheer to break through that cloud of melancholy he was wallowing under. “You’re alive, aren’t you? That’s something. You’re alive, and you’re with me, and you’re here, and—”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” That uncharacteristic despair was back now, as though it had never left at all, cutting through the shrouded insults and the cruel words and reminding her of what he was going through. “I’m _here_. After everything this place put me through, I’m still _here_.”

Bess thought of Earth. She thought of grown men screaming in pain, praying for death because it was less horrible than living. She thought of her father, of those men who were his friends, of their children who were her friends, of all the things they’d seen and learned and known together, things they never learned in school. She thought of True Danziger, so sure that Bess knew more than she thought she did, so sure that she was not stupid. She thought of Uly Adair, able to walk and run and laugh for the first time, and of Devon and the way she guarded him like a treasured secret, not giving him so much as a moment to enjoy his new-found freedom. She thought of Commander O’Neill, of Morgan, of seeing them both come back to life, and she wondered if death wasn’t so permanent in a place like this. She thought of all the things this world might have to give them, and all the things it might take away. She thought of life on Earth, life on the stations, and the life they might have here, if they just had the patience to let the world guide them.

“It’s really not as bad as all that,” she said again.

“And how would you know?” Morgan demanded furiously, sitting up and throwing up his arms. “You don’t know the first thing about this planet! None of us do! It almost killed me, and that stick-up-his-ass commander, and who knows what’s lurking around the next corner! You don’t know what’s going to happen to us out here, or what’s waiting for us in this so-called promised land that Adair woman’s dragging us to. Face it, Bess: you don’t know anything.”

“I know more than you think I do.” The words came reflexively, automatic, and they sounded utterly ridiculous even to her own ears.

Morgan rolled his eyes. “Of course you do, dear.”

—

Tired as he was, it was another two hours before he fell asleep.

Bess wasn’t used to seeing him so restless, so resistant to sleep, and it worried her. Most nights he was out cold the instant his head hit the pillow, oblivious to the hours she spent staring up at the ceiling and thought too much. Morgan loved to sleep; next to his VR gear, it was his favourite form of escapism, and it disquieted her a little to see him trying to reject it now.

It was perfectly natural, of course; she knew that, but it didn’t stop her from worrying. Truth be told, if she’d just spent the best part of a day in a dance with death, sleep would probably be the last thing she wanted too. She knew all too well the kinds of dreams that waited for him there, the feverish whispers of his doubts and his fears made manifest when his guard was down. _‘You can run but you can’t hide’_ or _‘You were lucky this time’_ or _‘Nobody lives forever, you know…’_ , and with them the endless memories of what it was like, the moment when he felt himself die. She thought about warning him, preparing him for what she knew he’d see, but what good would it do? He needed to recuperate, and that meant sleep, and he was resistant enough without her confirming the thing he was already so afraid of. So, instead, she said nothing at all. She held his hand and told him that she was there, that it was over, that she loved him. She gave him the gift of ignorance, because it was the thing he wanted most and the kindest thing she had to offer.

When he was finally asleep, and she was sure he was going to stay that way, she stepped outside. The night was well and truly underway by then, already starting its descent towards morning, and Bess wanted to take advantage of the peace and quiet while it was there. She wasn’t really one for solitude at the best of times, but sometimes there was nothing better to quiet a troubled mind; that was a concept that Morgan never could wrap his head around, she thought with some sorrow, breathing in the crisp night air. If ever there was a time when she needed a little solitude, it was now.

She didn’t get it, though. What she did get was the distant murmuring of Devon Adair and her long lost commander catching up, and the unwanted company of a former astronaut.

“How’s he faring?”

It wasn’t the easiest question to answer at the best of times, what with Morgan’s innate flightiness, and it was even harder now. If it had been Yale asking, or True, maybe she would’ve pieced together something resembling a coherent answer, because she wasn’t so intimidated by them. True thought she was smarter than she was, and Yale at least had a little respect for her even though she wasn’t smart at all; they saw a person beneath all that Earth grit and ignorance, but Gaal was new here and all he’d seen of Bess was how stupid she was and how much she depended on her husband. Neither of those things really put her in a good light, and that was without him knowing that she’d had to ask the kids’ teacher to explain what it meant to be a Pontel–7 astronaut in the first place.

“Oh,” she said, staring down at the ground. “He’s… you know, he’s… uh… well, he’s alive?” It came out like a question, so she added, “Like you said,” as if that didn’t make it a thousand times worse. She could feel his eyes on her, but he didn’t say anything and she scrounged desperately for more stupid words to fill the awkward silence. “He’s okay. Well, kind of spooked, I guess… but that’s normal, right?”

Why was she asking him? She knew that it was. It was one of the only things she knew — filed under _‘Death And How To Deal With Him’_ — and still she was asking someone else to affirm it, to pat her on the back and tell her that maybe she did know something after all. It made her want to tear her hair out in frustration. How could she expect Devon Adair and her station-smart friends to put any kind of faith in her when she clearly didn’t have any in herself? Asking a stranger to validate something she’d seen with her own eyes more times than she could count? It smacked of desperation, and a kind of stupidity that went beyond even the lowest levels she expected of herself.

Still, gentleman that he was, Gaal humoured her, and when he chuckled it was low and accommodating. “Indeed.”

Bess chewed on her lip, scuffing the dirt with her toes. She took a breath, steadied herself, and looked up at him, bracing for the subtle head-shaking or the not-so-subtle eye-rolling, those facial tics that always belied even the most well-intentioned humour. He wasn’t doing either of them, though; he was just smiling, assured but not cruel, just like the chuckle had been. It wasn’t the mocking smile that Alonzo gave when she asked stupid questions or the awkward coughing half-smile that Devon mustered for everyone else’s benefit whenever she said anything at all. It was a little closer to the way that Yale looked at her when she asked him to explain something, like she was endearing, not embarrassing, like he admired her for having the courage to try, and though it didn’t quite make her feel accepted in the same way that Yale’s smiles did, still it took the edge off her discomfort just a little, and bolstered her to keep going.

“I guess it stops being so scary once it’s happened a few times, huh?” 

The smiled widened a little, but softened too; he was starting to remind her of one of those rodent creatures, sweet and gentle, but deadly. “It does indeed.” He leaned in a bit, like he was sharing a precious secret. “From my experience, most things do.”

Bess remembered starvation and dehydration, a tight empty stomach and a rasping raw throat. She remembered accidents in the mines, smoke and blood and grown men praying for death. She remembered learning back then how helpless a little girl could feel, and learning now how little it took for a grown woman to feel that same helplessness all over again.

“Not all things,” she said sadly. “Some things just get harder the more times you see them.”

Gaal pondered that for a moment or two, seeming genuinely thoughtful. “Wise words,” he murmured, and it puzzled her that he didn’t sound surprised. “And a wise soul, I think. Your friends would do well not to underestimate you so much.”

It was a nice gesture, and no doubt well-intentioned, but Bess knew that it wasn’t true. No doubt he was just being polite, trying to ingratiate himself to the whole group; if he was going to stick around for a while — and she suspected he was — it would serve him well to try and get along with everyone. That first meeting with everyone had been unpleasantly awkward on Bess’s part, and she supposed this was his way of saying _‘no hard feelings’_. Still, as much as she appreciated the gesture, she was too much her father’s daughter to ever accept hollow flattery from anyone, and it came as second nature to turn away from something that burned so bright without a good reason.

“If a few pretty words was all it took to be smart,” she said, “I don’t think those station folk would set so much stock by it.”

He chuckled again, but this time it came out ominous and cryptic. “Oh, I’d never deign to accuse you of intelligence, my dear.”

“Huh?” Bess frowned, thoroughly perplexed. “But you said—”

“I said you were _wise_ ,” he said. “I didn’t say you were _smart_.”

—

“Semantics,” Morgan mumbled through a mouthful of breakfast.

He was a little more like himself this morning, but still not completely. The camp no doubt saw the same old antagonistic Morgan Martin they thought they knew so well, but Bess knew him better than they ever could and she saw the ghosts from last night were still behind his eyes when he rolled them, the same shadows still falling about his face when he lowered it. Still, the flickers of familiarity were welcome, however small, and they renewed her faith that time would heal the wounds in his soul just as surely as it had flushed the venom from his body.

They ate alone, just the two of them in their tent, because Morgan couldn’t bear the thought of sitting idly by and watching while the rest of the camp licked Commander O’Neill’s boots. _“I was dead too,”_ he’d complained as he dressed, _“but you don’t see them crowding round me like I’m the second coming!”_. Bess just smiled and tried to keep her face hidden so he wouldn’t see how happy she was to hear him whining once more about such trivial things.

She’d told him about her late-night talk with Gaal, mostly because they’d needed a conversation-starter, but also because she hoped that he would explain the difference to her. Synonyms made her head hurt, with their subtle differences, but Morgan understood the language of language as only a politician could, and if there was a distinction there he’d surely know it. She wanted his opinion, too, wanted to know if he felt the same as Gaal did, if he too thought that she was ‘wise but not smart’, whatever that meant. Honestly, though, she hadn’t expected much of a response; truth be told, she’d be flabbergasted if he’d ever spent more than a minute of his time thinking about her brainpower at all. That was her cross to bear, just like it always had been, and in the end it didn’t really surprise her at all when he just huffed and muttered _“Semantics!”_ like that gave her all the answers she could possibly want.

It didn’t, of course. She didn’t even know what ‘semantics’ meant.

“Semantics,” he grumbled again, when he’d found the time to swallow, as though the emphasis could transform the word into something different. “Smart or wise or intelligent, or whatever else. It’s all the same thing, it’s just a matter of putting a different spin on it. Semantics.” He snorted his derision then promptly went back to filling his mouth. “Anyway, if you ask me, that Gaal is a few sticks short of a bundle himself, so it’s not like it was much of a compliment in the first place, was it?”

That was hardly the point, but Bess lacked the faculties to explain why. It was a common fault of hers, the way she never really knew why she felt so strongly about something; it happened often, not least of all because she felt things strongly most of the time, and though she kept waiting for station life to tame her of those unfettered Earth emotions, it never did. Not that it mattered right now anyway, because Morgan had no intention of listening even if she had been more able to express herself; he’d already moved on, assuming like he always did that his word was the only one that mattered, and was gazing morosely at his empty breakfast plate.

“Well, at least you’ve got your appetite back,” Bess observed, as much to cheer herself as to cheer him, and handed over what was left of her own breakfast.

He didn’t bother asking if she was finished, if she was still hungry or wanted to save the food for herself; he didn’t bother asking anything at all, and it wasn’t until he was halfway through digging in when he realised he’d forgotten to even say ‘thank you’. More by necessity than out of any real appreciation, he stuck his head up for a second or two, mumbled a full-mouthed, “You’re a lifesaver, sweetheart,” and went right back to devouring her leftovers.

In an odd sort of way, that moment of graceless gluttony made Bess happier than anything she could remember in the last three days.

It was wonderful to see him eating with his usual voracity, even if that enthusiasm didn’t extend any further. She didn’t need Julia’s medical expertise or Gaal’s familiarity with the koba’s venom to know that it would take more than one good breakfast to chase away the dark things still haunting the places he thought nobody could see, but at least it was still a start. At least he was still capable of showing passion for something, even if it was just food; she’d seen enough miners come back from near-death experiences with no feelings left at all, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to Morgan, who was always so passionate. That he had something to be happy about, even if it was just filling his stomach, was a very good sign so far as she was concerned, and it boosted her mood to no end.

It felt good, proactive and kind of clever, to be the one who recognised these things. It felt like she had something to contribute, being able to look at her haunted husband and know with certainty that he would be all right. He didn’t believe it himself, she could tell; though he was too proud and stubborn to say so aloud, he really believed that he’d feel small and helpless for the rest of his life. Bess had seen it before, though, and she knew the signs. He was eating, and he was whining, and he had slept through the night seemingly without bad dreams. Those were all really positive signs, and any one alone would’ve been a whole lot more than she expected after last night.

“You’re doing good, Morgan,” she murmured aloud.

He glanced up from his fast-diminishing second breakfast, clearly not believing it for a second. “Well, I don’t _feel_ good,” he grumbled. “I feel like I’ve just come back from the dead, and no-one cares.”

“I care,” she told him, and punctuated the point with a kiss to his cheek. “I care a whole lot. You can ask True if you like. I never left your side the whole time. Not once. Not even for a minute.”

That got through to him, and his sullenness softened just a little. “Really?”

“Really.”

This time he was the one to kiss her, once and then again. First, a tender brush across her forehead and a feverish whisper of gratitude; it lasted barely a moment before the second one, a tighter pressure against her mouth, fierce and feverish, the kind that begged for more. She could feel the urgency in him, desperation in the thrum of his pulse and the way his lips trembled, the way his hands turned to steel where they clutched at her shirt, the way he looked at her, eyes half-closed and pleading. She’d seen that kind of desperation before, too, the feral need to cling to something normal, something he could understand, something that made sense. 

So she gave him that. For him, of course, but for herself as well, because he wasn’t the only one who needed it. He wasn’t the only one who’d been through an ordeal, and he wasn’t the only one who needed reminding that he was alive, that it was over, that he wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t the only one who’d spent the last day or so staring down death; he was just the only one facing it for the first time. He’d almost died, and she felt for him, but she’d almost lost him too and she needed him now too just as desperately he needed her, and at least mostly for the same reasons.

For so long all she’d been able to do was pray and hope and cling to a stranger’s promise that it would all work out, that deadly didn’t mean _deadly_ in this strange new world, and now it had all come true. Her husband had come back to her, and she didn’t want to listen to strangers any more, didn’t want to see or hear or talk to those people who were nothing like her. All she wanted was Morgan, the man she loved, the man she’d almost lost, and it didn’t matter that he was also nothing like her, didn’t matter that he sometimes — _often_ — thought the same things they did, didn’t matter that he saw a stupid Earth girl too. None of that mattered at all, because he loved her and she loved him, and neither of them was dead.

So they celebrated that, together. Desperate and urgent, fumbling and feverish but never hurried, passionate just like they were, like he was when he wanted something, like she was when she cared about something. And that was how they came together, him with his wanting and her with her caring, and the two of them in perfect harmony. _Them_ , and even if it didn’t last more than a few frenzied minutes, at least they’d leave with the memory of it seeping through their skin as the day swept over them. _Them_ , and for those few frenzied minutes they were the only ones on the whole damn planet.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he said again when they were finished, cheek warm and rough against her clavicle. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Bess, I really don’t.”

“Neither do I,” she replied with a smile, then sobered as she sat up, grateful for the shelter of the tent as she reached for her shirt. “Morgan, you really are doing good. I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s the truth.”

“You have too much faith in me,” he muttered, almost hostile.

“There’s no such thing as too much faith,” she countered. “Too much food, sure. Too much to drink, too much money, too much of all that big ol’ nothing you station folk take for granted. There’s too much of everything in that place.” He opened his mouth to argue, to defend his precious pampered station life, maybe even to remind her that she enjoyed it herself while it was hers, but she didn’t give him a chance to get the words out. “You can get too much of anything, is what I’m saying. But not faith. There’s no such thing as too much faith.”

He, of course, was undeterred. “Well, you’ve definitely got too much of something.”

“Got too much of plenty of things,” she agreed easily. “And not enough of plenty more. But hell, that’s just life. We’ve all got too much of something and not enough of something else, that’s just how it is.” She thought of Yale and True, so smart but in such different ways, and let her eyes slide shut, wondering what sort of things they lacked. “You just gotta hope that the thing you’ve got is the thing you need, and that the thing you need isn’t the thing you don’t got.”

“Don’t _have_ ,” he corrected automatically.

She swatted at his arm. “Don’t change the subject.”

He snorted at that, but didn’t say anything more. Not that she’d expected him to, really; she understood well enough that he didn’t want to hear what she had to say, even if it was right. The only thing he wanted right now was to be told how right he was to feel so bad, how justified his misery was. Well, he wouldn’t get that validation from her, she thought with a touch of stubbornness, no matter how much he sighed and pouted about it. She had seen survival, and she had seen the alternative too, and as far as she was concerned, so long as he was in the survivor’s camp he was doing just fine.

“Say,” she went on, trying to be helpful. “Why don’t you go and catch up with Commander O’Neill? He’s probably doing better after a good night’s sleep too, and he’s about the only one in the group who really gets what you’re going through.”

It was a good suggestion, and she knew it even before his eyes lit up. She had at least enough sense to recognise that he wanted that so much more than her, that he didn’t care if she understood the theoretics of what happened to him; he wanted someone he could talk to, ‘man-to-man’, someone he can compare notes with, someone who could help him to vent a little of the noise hissing around like satellite static in his head. He wanted someone who’d been through the same thing he had, and that’s just what the commander was. Whatever else his reappearance might’ve been, at the very least it was potentially good news for Morgan’s recovery. And maybe for his own too; from Bess’s experience, this sort of thing usually went both ways. She smiled, sensing the way he’d brightened at the idea, and watched as he mulled it over.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” he murmured after a moment. “I’m sure he’d appreciate having a like-minded companion… a kindred spirit, if you will. I could share my wisdom and experience with him.”

 _Share your misery, you mean,_ she thought, but didn’t say so out loud.

“There you go, then,” she said instead, smiling. “You have a plan now. You have a full belly—”

“Let’s not go overboard,” he muttered, staring down at his second empty plate.

Bess swatted him again. “You have a full belly and a plan. So far as I can tell, that’s all the makings of a pretty good morning. Wouldn’t you say?”

He stared at her, slack-jawed, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Bess looked down at the floor, feeling self-conscious. She knew he hated it when she tried to put a positive spin on things, and no doubt he was all the more sensitive now, still riding his impassioned _‘I’m worse off than anyone else in the universe’_ train. Still, the way he stared at her made her uncomfortable, like that first night with Gaal, like she’d said something so stupid he needed a moment to process it. Finally, he shook his head, and she swallowed over a suddenly dry throat.

“Optimism,” he said at last, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he said it. “That’s what you have too much of. Damn cock-eyed optimism.”

She laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing I do,” she said, “’cause you sure don’t have enough.”

—

Optimism, as it turned out, was fundamentally useless, and by the next morning, Commander O’Neill was dead again.

It was staggering, how quickly good turned to bad on this planet. Just as the bad had turned to good in the blink of an eye — Julia whispering _“he’s dead”_ in one moment, and Gaal insisting that he wasn’t in the next — it seemed the opposite was just as true. The day passed in a haze of positive feelings, not just for Bess but for the whole camp, invigorated by having seen two people cheat death, but by the time morning came it was worse than ever. Pain cuts twice as deep the second time around, because surviving it the first time makes you feel like you’re invincible. Bess knew that all too well, and the only comfort she could find as she watched the spirit drain out of the group was in reminding herself that she hadn’t known the commander herself at all.

She tried to reawaken the feeling she’d had when she learned about his supposed death the first time, tried to remember that selfish feeling of quiet relief, the impossible idea that for once in her life the grief and the loss wasn’t her own. That feeling left her hollow now, though, and she couldn’t find the strength it had brought. She wanted that strength now, wanted to be supportive for Devon who had known him so well, for the others too, even for Morgan who lamented loudly and frequently that he and the commander had shared a ‘special bond’ in those few fleeting minutes they’d had to share their experiences. She wanted to be the woman she was the first time, the woman who could offer a shoulder or an ear or whatever anyone wanted, who had the strength of dissociation to make her sympathetic.

That woman was gone now, though. That woman had devolved another one, one who was a little less compassionate and a little more helpless. The woman she was now felt colder, a little less soft; she was the woman who had sat by her husband’s side for hours upon hours while he died slowly, while everyone else had searched and fretted over a bull-headed old hellion who’d just gone and thrown his second chance at life away, less than a day later. She’d grown cooler, wounded, a whole lot quicker to protect the things that mattered. She had to; if this hellish experience had taught her anything, it was that nobody else would.

She’d become something different, something she didn’t like very much, and when she went to offer her sympathies to Devon Adair — for the second time in less than a week — the words felt as worthless as she did.

“Thank you,” Devon said, and she sounded different too.

“If you need help with anything…” Bess offered weakly. “Heavy lifting or keeping the kids out of trouble…”

Devon stared at her, eyes blank, features hollowed out by grief and shock. She reminded Bess of Morgan, the night after he woke, unable to process everything that happened, the unfairness and the cruelty of it all. Part of her wanted to reach out, to try and bridge the chasm between them, to offer so much more than futile words and vain attempts at helping, but there was a kind of coldness in Devon than she hadn’t seen in Morgan, and it startled her.

“I can take care of my son perfectly well by myself, thank you,” she said, and there it was in her words, that coldness. Bess knew that she wasn’t trying to be cruel, only protect her aching heart, but it still stung. “And he doesn’t get in trouble.”

“I didn’t mean…” she started, stammering, then lowered her head. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that he did. I just figured I’d offer, in case you need a little time for yourself after everything that…” She trailed off. “Well, you know. He’s a good kid, Devon, and I just thought—”

“Thank you,” Devon said again, voice sharp.

Bess knew a dismissal when she heard one, and she swallowed hard to hide her wounded pride. “Right,” she said, and forced herself to smile. “Of course. I’ll just let you get back to…” She looked around, realised Devon wasn’t actually doing anything, and shrugged. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your thoughts, anyhow.”

“Thank you.”

Bess’s heart was heavy as she walked away, aching with conflict. She wanted to help, she really did, but at the same time she couldn’t help thinking that maybe she didn’t; she’d suffered too, after all, and where was Devon then? It wasn’t like her to be resentful about little things; that was what Morgan did and it was one of the things she’d always sworn would never happen to her. Life was too short to hold grudges; her father had drilled that into her head more times than she could count. But still, it stung. The dismissal, the neglect, all of it.

Devon hadn’t asked after Morgan even once, not while he was dying, not after he’d recovered, not ever. She hadn’t asked how Bess was coping, either, hadn’t asked if there was anything she could do to make things easier, hadn’t said a single word. In fact, the closest thing to a conversation they’d had in the last two days had been when Devon short her a dirty look for daring to take her sun out for a run. That was it, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of exchange that built trust of any kind, much less friendship.

Bess had plenty of reasons to ignore Devon now that she was the one hurting, but she hadn’t, and she couldn’t deny that it cut kind of deep to be rejected now, when she was trying to do the right thing. She, at least, had tried; it was more than Devon had done for her, but still somehow she’d ended up in the same place, rejected and cast aside. No matter what she did, it seemed, it didn’t make a difference. She was still just a stupid Earth girl.

 _Stupid_ , she thought, and rolled her eyes like Morgan did.


	8. Chapter 8

The horizon was on fire.

It was breathtaking and a little morbid, the way the sunset lit up the rock beneath like a mine blast in reverse. Bess let the sight wash over her, let it cast its shadows over her restless thoughts, quiet and chaotic in equal measure. Tomorrow might bring more pain, more death, more horror, and she knew better than anyone how important it was to take a moment like this when it was offered. The sunset was painful, a beacon to light up the life they’d lost not once but twice, but it was also beautiful, and beauty was a rare and precious thing in a world of so much loss. It made her feel small, humble, and that was exactly how she wanted to feel. She needed a moment like this to cling to, to wrap around herself and remember when things got dark again. Fire on the horizon, heat and light and the promise of a new morning when that darkness finally faded. It was so important to remember, and so easy to forget.

“Bess?”

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. “Yes, True?”

The girl’s presence was like a klaxon beside her, impossible to ignore, but there was something new in her now, something Bess hadn’t noticed before. She was warm and strong, still so small and shy, and yet somehow fundamentally different from the selfish young thing she was not so long ago. Recent events had touched her, it seemed, just like they had touched Bess, just like they had touched everyone.

They’d only been on this planet for a very short time, but in that time death had reasserted its power over all of them. Old friend that he was, he’d taken up his old familiar place behind Bess’s shoulder, but it wasn’t just her he was keeping an eye on this time. He had a mind for them all, Morgan and Devon, anyone who dared to think they were above him. Already it was changing them, awakening in them a new kind of awareness that they’d never needed before, and by doing that it was changing them. Bit by bit, piece by piece, they were becoming something different, something strange and new, in some places a little better and in others a little worse.

Bess could still remember the calculated dismissal in the way Devon had thanked her, but she remembered too the resolve and the fire she saw in her eyes. She was stronger, if harder, and only time would tell them if that was more for the good or the bad. Morgan too was a different man now to the one she’d known before, and she was simultaneously worried and hopeful for the things she in him now. They were becoming survivors, learning just now all the things that Bess had known all her life, all the things that had kept her and her people alive. She envied them, discovering it for the first time, and pitied them too because they had to learn it at all.

It was True that she pitied the most. Seeing those same changes in someone so young was a cut so deep she couldn’t bear it. Devon and Morgan were older, and it made Bess angry sometimes to think of all the things they knew that Bess didn’t and all the things that Bess knew and they never had to. Devon had seen the ravages of sickness in her son, but G889 had made him whole again and she was too proud and too stubborn to take that blessing for what it was. It was difficult for Bess to pity Devon Adair, even as she knew she should, and even more difficult to pity Morgan though he was her husband. He’d taken his privileges to the extreme, until he couldn’t even see them any more, and though she still trembled to think about how close she’d been to losing him, still she couldn’t help thinking that a little planet living might be just what he needed.

It was so different with True. Even after everything that had happened, all the ways that it was her fault Morgan had almost died, still it came as easily as breathing to feel sorry for her. They hadn’t been here very long at all, and yet the True Danziger who stood beside her now was vastly different to the one who had crept into the tent just yesterday. This new True held herself a little straighter, breathed a little rougher, and understood a little more than she had before. Bess didn’t need to turn and look at her to see that; it was right there in her every breath. This True was a far cry from that foot-shuffling little girl who couldn’t articulate anything more complex than _“I feel bad”_ , that awkward pre-teen who couldn’t see beyond her own feelings, who had never needed to think past what made her happy or sad.

In barely more than a day, True had become more than Devon had in her son’s entire lifetime, and that was as humbling as it was saddening. Bess was proud to know this new True, and in a strange sort of way she was pleased that she’d met the other one, the selfish one. It gave her a means of measuring the space between them, the distance they’d both come, and a way of appreciating the journey that it had taken to get here. It gave her space to see just how far someone so young could come in so short a time, and she wondered if True had any idea just how remarkable she was for coming out of all this a better person than she’d gone in. Nobody else in the group had managed that, least of all Bess herself.

“How’s Morgan?”

The question came from out of nowhere, and it struck hard, catching Bess right in the chest and landing like a blow between her ribs. It was so simple, and it sounded so natural, like it was the only logical thing to ask, and hearing it said like that hit home with a violence that stole her breath. Nobody else had thought to ask that question, she remembered again, and it hurt; it sounded so easy, so obvious coming from True, and yet nobody else had bothered. Nobody — not Devon, not the doctor, not True’s father — had cared enough about either of them to ask.

It wasn’t a revelation that they didn’t care; Bess already knew that. She knew that none of the others liked Morgan, and she knew just as well that most of them disliked her too by association. They didn’t think anyone who liked a man like Morgan Martin could possibly be respectable in their own right, and Bess hadn’t done much to prove them wrong in that respect. All she’d done thus far was showcase her stupidity, and in the eyes of the group that made her an embarrassment, just as bad as her husband albeit in a more innocuous way. They had no interest in either of them, and of course they never thought to ask. Basic human decency could only go so far in a place like this, and there was only so much of it to go around in a group full of pampered station folk who didn’t know the value of empathy. She’d expected nothing less, though that didn’t stop it from hurting.

But then there was True. True, who was there when Morgan was dying, who was there again now, standing by Bess’s side and asking that question that nobody else did. Whatever her motivations, she was there. She waited with Bess because she wanted the company, because she wanted the forgiveness, because she wanted to feel better about herself. She waited with her for any one of a thousand selfish reasons, but she still _waited_. She still sat there, she still prayed with her, she still tried to offer what little comfort she could. She’d faced her mistake, owned up to it and saw it through to its very end. There was a lot to be said for someone so young having the strength of character to do something like that.

Certainly, there was something to be said for True’s empathy in asking the question now, and when Bess weighed the dozen or more possible answers, she chose the one that was true because True had earned her honesty.

“I think he’s doing pretty good,” she said. “All things considered, anyhow.” She sucked in a breath, chewed on her lip, tried to give voice to all those feelings, all those conflicted thoughts, how hurt she was at the others’ neglect and how touched by True’s compassion. She wanted to say so much, to make her see how remarkable it was simply that she’d thought to ask the question at all, but all that came out was, “Thank you for asking, True.”

She felt the air shift as True shrugged, one shoulder dipping lower than the other. “Well, I didn’t see anyone else asking,” she said, ever so plainly. “And I thought… I thought someone should. Even if it’s just me. And I know I’m probably the last person you’d want to hear it from, and that’s okay, but I just… I just figured you might appreciate it if someone asked. Even if it is just me.”

That touched her, deeply and fundamentally, and for a moment Bess couldn’t do anything but gaze at the sunset and hope that the dying light would burn away the tears before they had a chance to fall.

“You’re right, True,” she said after a moment, voice brutally soft in the dying evening. “I do appreciate it.” The pain in her chest tightened, twisted and rose up into her throat, a lump like a stone that hurt when she swallowed. “And to be perfectly honest, I think it means more from you than it would have from anyone else.”

“Really?” True sounded almost awed. “Even after what I did?”

Bess didn’t even need to think. “Especially after what you did.”

It was true, and her breath hitched to realise it. She wasn’t sure how this had happened, how she’d found her closest ally in a selfish little girl, but somehow she had. In a way, she supposed it made sense; hers was a childish mind, at least next to the rest of the group, and it was only fitting that she’d find a like-minded companion among the children. But it wasn’t just that; it was as much who True was as who she was. Maybe it was selfishness that had sent her to apologise, but it was kindness that had made her pray and empathy that had brought her here now. She thought of the way True looked at her, the way she didn’t see someone stupid and worthless, the way she thought that she knew more than she did, and the way she didn’t care if she didn’t know anything at all. It was true, she realised again, and marvelled at how far they’d come from _“I feel bad”_ and _“I don’t care”_.

They stood there together for a while, watching the sunset and thinking, together and separately, and for a moment that bled out with the colours of the sky it was all that either of them needed. A moment, but a beautiful one, a piece of calm to cling to in the rising darkness.

“Bess?”

She smiled. “Yes, True?”

“Do you remember…” Her voice was a little shaky, like she was feeling more than she could process. “Do you remember, back in the tent, when Morgan was…” She swallowed, a heavy crack in the perfect silence. “…when we prayed together?”

Eyes on the horizon, Bess nodded. “I remember.”

True swallowed again, a little quieter. “Do you remember telling me that I don’t have to believe in God… that all I need to do is believe in something?”

“Yes, I remember that, too.”

“Well…” True inhaled shakily, held it for a moment then let it out; her breath caught as she did, hitching in a way that Bess had never heard before, a way that sounded almost like pain. “I…”

The moment felt heavy, reverent, and Bess finally turned away from the skyline, broke contact with the firelight and the heat and the promise of a new day, turned to give all her attention to the smart little girl who had grown so much so quickly. There was fire in True’s eyes too, reflections of the sunset and something else entirely, a little piece of her soul shining through past the warmth and the rocks and all the new things this planet had given them. The last few days had changed her, and Bess wondered if maybe the praying had too.

“What is it?” she pressed, ever so gently.

True took another breath, steadying herself. “It’s just… what if I don’t have anything? What if it’s just me? What then?”

Bess thought about that. She wondered how it must feel, to be so young and not know what it was to have faith. She thought of all those times back on Earth where those old familiar prayers had given her comfort when nothing else could, long nights spent alone praying for her father, or else joining her friends in praying for theirs. She wondered how those terrible times would have felt without faith, with nobody to pray to and no words to wrap their mouths and hearts around.

_It must be hard,_ she thought, _growing up without faith and suddenly finding that you need it._ She pitied True for her safe station upbringing, pitied her for the bubble of safety that her father had worked so hard to wrap around her. She envied her too, just as she’d always envied station kids as a child, with their sanctuary and security, with their innocence and their youth; children could be children on the stations, could reach their tenth birthdays and still not know ten different ways to die. She envied her for all those things just as she always had, but now she pitied her too. G889 was not a kind world, at least not from what she’d seen of it thus far; she couldn’t imagine having to scrabble for something to believe in on top of everything else.

She looked at True, studied her long and hard. She forgot the sunset, forgot all the flames except the ones dancing in the girl’s eyes, those lightning-strikes of passion and determination that reminded her so much of another little girl, a long time ago and very far away, a little girl who was still too young to read and write but still knew every word to every prayer by heart, because faith was the only thing a child could depend on in a world like that.

She didn’t know very much. Most days, she didn’t know anything at all. But she knew how to pray, and she knew how to have faith. She knew how important it was to find something worth believing in, something to make the day worth getting through, no matter how small or silly. She was lucky; she had her husband, and when he was struck down she had her prayers to sustain her until he got better. She had an abundance of faith, and an abundance of places to put it. But True was doubly unlucky: she didn’t understand how faith worked, and she couldn’t believe in the blessings she had.

Maybe knowing nothing was a little like wisdom after all, Bess thought, because inexplicably she knew exactly what to say, exactly the kind of faith that a lost little girl like True needed most.

“Well, then,” she said, feeling for the first time like she knew something, that she had a kind of knowledge worth sharing. “If it’s just you, why not start with that?”

True blinked, then frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why not start by believing in yourself?” True recoiled at that, and so Bess elucidated quickly. “You really are a smart person, True. A very smart person, and a very resourceful person too. But much more important than either of those things, you’re a _good_ person. And even when you’re not, even when you do things that aren’t good at all, you try to make them right. You own up to your mistakes, and you try to do right by the people you’ve wronged. You try so hard to do good, True, even after you’ve done bad.” That was more than she could say about the rest of their little group, though she didn’t say so. “If you really want something to believe in, you could do a whole lot worse than True Danziger.”

True was silent for a very long time, so long that Bess started to wonder if she was going to speak at all. She stared at the horizon, watched the fire-burned rocks flare and flicker as the darkness of night swept over them, watched as the heat and the beauty started to dim and fade. Bess, on the other hand, just watched her, marvelling at how much brighter the distant sky looked through her eyes.

At long last, True steeled herself to speak. “You really think so?” she asked, in a voice so soft and reverent that it felt almost like a prayer.

Bess smiled, though she knew True wouldn’t see it. “I really think so.”

True’s shoulders slumped as she thought about it. Though the fire on the horizon was starting to die, the fire behind her eyes remained as blinding as ever, gathering strength as she worked through her thoughts, the half-crazed notion that she herself might be something worth believing in, that somewhere deep inside of her might be something like faith, and a reason to see that faith ignite. It was a lot to take in, Bess knew, but she watched and waited, respectfully silent, while True wrestled with it all.

“What if I can’t?” she whispered after a moment. “I mean, what if you’re wrong, and I’m not worth believing in after all?”

“You are,” Bess told her, voice ringing clear, alight with the one thing she knew best: _faith_ , pure and perfect. “If you can’t believe in yourself, believe me, and believe that. You’re worth a lot, True.”

True looked up at her, suddenly very small and uncharacteristically shy. “But what if I’m not?” she asked again, plaintive and hopeless and so reminiscent of the dark-drowned child that Bess used to be. “What if I’m really just me? What if I’m really not worth anything?” She stared down at her shoes, then forced herself to look back up. Her eyes were bright, but also deeply frightened. “Will you be disappointed?”

“Of course not,” Bess said. “But you are. Whether you believe in yourself or not, you _are_ worth something. Worth a lot, even. So you might as well go ahead and believe it, right?”

True chewed her lip uneasily. “I guess… maybe…”

“Definitely.” Bess squeezed her shoulder, brief and kind. “But, hey. No-one ever said you’ve got to figure all of this out overnight. It’s not a race, True, and you can take as much time as you need. Hell, it’s not like any of us are going anywhere, is it? So you have all the time in the world to figure it out and realise that maybe you have more to offer than you think you do. You have all the time in the world to find a place for yourself here, True, and you have all the time in the world to make that place feel like home.”

True took a deep breath, swallowed hard, looked down at the shadows lengthening at their feet. Then, without warning, she surged forwards and hauled Bess into the biggest hug she’d ever had in her life. It cut off her breathing, left her strangled and gasping, but she didn’t care. She felt warm and appreciated and understood; for the first time in her life she felt like she might’ve actually done something worthwhile, something useful, something that wasn’t stupid. For the first time in her life, someone had listened to what she had to say, and had gotten something out of it. It was an incredible feeling, and when she returned the hug, wrapping her arms around skinny young shoulders, it was every bit as fiercely as True hugged her.

“Thank you,” True whispered, the words soft and smothered by the thin fabric of Bess’s shirt.

“You’re welcome, True,” Bess whispered back. “And thank you, too.”

“For what?” True pulled back, puzzled, and frowned up at her. “What do you have to thank me for?” Bess opened her mouth to answer, to list all the things that True didn’t see, all the little things she didn’t think twice about, but True didn’t give her the chance. “I nearly killed Morgan. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Maybe not,” Bess said. “But maybe it would have. Maybe it would’ve happened some other time, maybe without Gaal around to tell us that those creatures aren’t really dangerous at all. And what then? We’d’ve buried him like you folks buried the commander, and it would’ve ended worse for him.” She shuddered a little; it made her head spin to think about that, the horrors of being buried alive. She shook it off, forced herself to press on. “Or maybe something worse would’ve happened, something none of us can think of right now. Maybe—”

“But maybe it wouldn’t,” True argued, cutting her off. “Maybe everything would’ve been wonderful if I’d just learned my lesson the first time, like you said.” She sounded tortured. “I know you think I’m smart, but I’m not. I’m not smart at all. Smart people don’t need two people to almost die before they figure out that they did something wrong.”

“Sometimes they do,” Bess said. “Hell, sometimes even the smartest person in the whole world needs a little kick up the backside before he figures out he’s being stupid.”

True frowned. “That doesn’t sound very smart to me.”

Bess thought about her father and the other miners, strong and proud men who never claimed to be smart and never wanted to be either. For a moment, she almost felt ashamed of herself, of the preoccupation she had with such things, the way those station folk had gotten under her skin and made her into something shallow and weak. She was so desperate now, so hungry for every last scrap of knowledge that Yale could offer, wanting so badly to know even a little of what these smart station folk knew, so desperate to be even half as clever as they were.

It meant so much to her all of a sudden, and she was only just now starting to realise that it wasn’t because it mattered to _her_ at all. It wasn’t because she really believed all that knowledge was worth anything, but because they did, Morgan and his friends, Devon and her people, all the station folk she’d ever met. It wasn’t for herself, wasn’t because the knowledge really meant anything to her personally, but because it meant so much to _them_ , those self-righteous smart folks who had become the only family she had. Being smart meant being accepted, and Bess had not felt accepted since she left Earth. It made her feel ashamed now, thinking of how desperately she wanted their approval, and she wondered how disappointed her father would be if he knew.

“Smart is a complicated thing, True,” she said out loud, realising for the first time just how true that really was. “For some folks, it means knowing stuff. And for some folks, it means knowing what to do with the stuff you know.”

“What does it mean to you?” True asked, like Bess’s definition of intelligence was some kind of yardstick to measure against her own, like Bess knew anything about anything at all.

She shrugged, wishing she didn’t feel so ashamed. “To folks like me, it’s just another thing that other people have and we don’t.” It sounded sad, but it was the truth, as simply as she could put it. “Honestly, True, I never even thought about it before I met Morgan. When I was your age, being smart was the last thing on my mind. We never had any reason to think about it, or wonder what it might be like, or anything at all. So I never did. Until I left Earth and went to live on the stations, and…” Her voice broke; even now, two years and twenty-two light-years later, it still hurt. “…and suddenly everyone was looking at me like I was worthless, just because I wasn’t smart.” She swallowed hard, looked away, ashamed of herself for feeling this way, and for letting True see it. “I understand it better now. I know what I am, and why, and it’s okay. But I never… before I moved to the stations, I never knew that being stupid was a bad thing.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” True whispered.

“I know you don’t. But a lot of people do.” _Even your father, most likely,_ she thought, though she’d never say so. “You see, True, being smart is everything to you station folk. A person is good or bad, depending on how much he knows and how much he does with it, and that’s… well, it’s real different to the way I grew up on Earth. We never knew much of anything. None of us did, not just me, and it was just fine by us. We got by with what we had, what we did, and it didn’t matter how much we knew or didn’t know. But living on the stations, you live or die by how much you know and how much the other fella doesn’t.” She sighed, forced herself to brighten. “It’s just a different way of thinking, that’s all. A different way of thinking, and a different way of living. And there’s nothing wrong with it, not a blessed thing. But it’s just not the way I was raised. It’s not the way I _am_.” Saying it aloud for the first time felt like a confession, and for a fraction of a second her soul felt almost clean. “I’m not… I’m not like your people, True, and I don’t think I ever will be.”

True’s eyes were bright and damp when she looked at her, and there was such pain on her face that Bess felt doubly bad for burdening her with all of that. She was so young, so innocent, so unattuned to the ways of the world, and for a moment she hated herself for letting her see that side of it. She opened her mouth to apologise, but True silenced her with a hand on her face, gaze strong and steady even through the shimmering of salt in her eyes.

“I think you’re wrong,” she said, a barely-audible breath. “You know a lot that I don’t. You know a lot that none of us do.”

“Try telling that to Uly’s mother,” Bess muttered, remembering how Devon had turned her away, then softened for True’s sake. “I mean… well, Devon doesn’t seem to think so.”

“She will,” True insisted. “She’ll figure it out, Bess, she will. She’s just a little slow. You know, because she’s old and set in her ways.” She smiled, bright and full of faith. “She not smart like you and me. She just needs a little time to get there.”

Bess laughed, more moved than she could say. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a great judge of character?” she asked, to leaven the moment.

“Not lately,” True said, and she laughed too.

This time, when the silence fell between them it barely lasted a few moments before True got antsy. Bess could practically hear the gears inside her head, could feel how hard she was thinking, how much she was feeling, and she was already nodding her acknowledgement even before the poor girl found the courage to open her mouth.

“Yes, True?”

True shuffled her feet, embarrassed to be caught out, or perhaps embarrassed by the way she couldn’t sit through a moment’s silence without feeling the urge to fill it. That was a station thing, Bess had learned; on Earth, silence was a rare thing, very precious and deeply cherished, a refuge from the endlessness of surviving, from barked out orders or whispered prayers, the complaints of starving children or the screams of dying men. Silence was a gift on Earth, but on the stations it was a heavy burden, a void too often filled with unpleasant thoughts. They talked all the time up there; most days Bess could barely hear herself think.

True was station born, and she had inside her that same fear of silence — of thinking too much — the rest of them did. For a people who thrived so obsessively on knowing things, they weren’t so big on thinking, Bess thought, and chuckled to herself while she waited for True to voice what was on her mind this time.

At long last, she blurted out, “Why did you let me stay with you?”

She didn’t need to elaborate; they both knew what she was talking about. _Morgan_ , Bess thought, flinching at the memory of his still and lifeless face in that terrible sickroom. The question was easy, but finding an answer wasn’t. She’d tried not to think too much about it before now, letting it lie in the past where it belonged, but she’d promised herself that True deserved honesty, and so she forced herself to think about it now.

She remembered how strange she’d felt in those first few desperate hours, how hollow and how horrified, the numbness from Julia’s sedative waging war against the parts of her that wanted to scream and sob. She remembered how she felt when True came creeping into the tent, mumbling those self-serving apologies, remembered how she’d wanted to be angry but was still too empty inside. She remembered saying that she didn’t care and feeling like she did, just not about the right things. She remembered the confusion, the bitter feeling, the hurt that wanted to be so much more.

She remembered True’s quiet penance, too, selfish and unwelcome as it was. She remembered wishing that she would leave, and the sense of betrayal when she asked to stay. It surprised her that she’d had the decency to ask permission, that she’d thought about Bess’s feelings even for a moment, instead of just pulling up a chair and sticking around regardless of whether she was wanted or not. In hindsight, she knew that True had tried, but at the time it did little to comfort the part of her that wanted her gone. Her every instinct had screamed at her to send the girl away, had demanded that she show no mercy, that she be as cruel to True as the girl’s selfishness had been to Morgan. _Go away,_ she’d thought. _Go away and leave us be_.

And yet, even then, it seemed that some part of her didn’t want that at all. That part, a part that she still didn’t really understand, had cried out instead with thoughts of prayer, of faith and forgiveness, of things that had been so close and so far away at the time. She’d wanted to turn her away, but instead she’d reached out, and even now she wasn’t sure why.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. It felt so insufficient, so she went on. “Maybe I just didn’t want to be alone any more.”

True sighed, soft and sad. “I see.”

Bess looked down again, saw the guilt still lining her young face, softening the shape to shadow. It made her look much older than she was, and wiser too, like someone who had learned hard lessons in hard ways. But then, maybe that was just because she had. She really was older, even if she hadn’t aged, and she had started to learn those difficult lessons. This world really had changed her, just as it had changed Bess; it had made them both into something new, something that they didn’t think they could be, and it would be up to them to decide what that meant after today.

“Well,” she added, letting the word hum like an afterthought. “Maybe not just that. Maybe… I don’t know, maybe a little part of me had a little faith in you.”

“Really?” True sounded awestruck, like she couldn’t fathom the idea. “But you were so mad at me…”

That was right enough, truth be told, but True looked so hopeful, so painfully optimistic that Bess couldn’t bring herself to hurt her feelings by saying so. She’d come so far, become so much more than she was, and it didn’t feel fair to punish the person she was now for the mistakes that had taught her to change. Bess couldn’t imagine what Devon and Morgan would think of her if they knew the things she’d done at True’s age, and she hadn’t had nearly so much positive reinforcement as True did. Children were children, and no matter how smart or stupid they were, it was unfair to expect that they’d never be selfish or make mistakes. True’s mistakes had been potential lethal, sure, but everything about this planet was potentially lethal, and she didn’t feel right coming down on her now when no harm had come of it. Once, twice, or three times; she’d learned her lesson now. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

So, because she didn’t want to dwell on what had happened any more than True did, she nodded and smiled and let it fall away behind them.

“I wasn’t mad at you,” she said, choosing her words carefully and twisting them into something that might pass as truth. “I was just… scared. For Morgan, you know. I was scared, and I was hurting. That’s all.”

True nodded, hung her head. “And even though it was my fault… even though I was the one who made you feel like that… you still let me stay?”

“Sure.” Her head felt heavy, but she held it up just the same because she wanted True to see how important this was. “Like I said, there’s a lot of good in you, True, and a lot to have faith in. Even being hurt and scared, d’you think I couldn’t see that?” She swallowed over the dishonesty, focused on what was needed now instead of what she’d wanted then. “You don’t have to believe in yourself. It’s okay if you can’t, or if you don’t want to. But even if you don’t, that’s not going to change who you are. It won’t take the good stuff away. It won’t get rid of the potential inside you. It’ll just stop you from seeing it.” She smiled, sweet but sincere. “And that would be pretty sad, don’t you think?”

True looked away. “Maybe.”

“Maybe.” Bess touched her arm, a momentary contact that lingered a little longer when True leaned in to welcome it. “But hey, there’s no harm in giving it a shot, right? No harm in trying. I promise you, True, no-one’s going to be disappointed if you can’t believe in yourself, or if you can’t believe in anything at all. And even if they were, forget ’em. Do it for you, not for anyone else. Not for me, not for your dad, not for anyone. Just you.” She crouched down, close enough to the ground that True was above her and she had to look up. “If you really want to have faith, True, you’ve got to do it for yourself. Just you, no-one else. That’s the only way it’s ever going to work.”

True nodded, features still. “I’ll try,” she promised.

“That’s all anyone can ask of you,” Bess said. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

“I won’t.”

Though her knees were sore, grit and dirt digging in through the holes in her pants, she stayed down there, gave True the height and the power that went with it, handed over control of the conversation to her. True was chewing on her lip again, like she wanted to say more — if only to banish the silence again — but couldn’t seem to think of anything worth saying. Bess didn’t push her, but she shifted a little on her haunches so that she could turn and take in the last dying whimper of the sunset while she waited.

At long last, True leaned forward again, wrapping her around Bess’s neck in another awkward hug, less ferocious this time but no less significant. Bess held on tight, let True take what she wanted, let her drain a little of Bess’s own faith, let her feel the way it thrummed inside of her, let her sense the peace it brought her even in the most trying times, let her take it all and use it however she could.

“I’ll try,” True said again when she drew back. Her eyes shone with the last vestiges of the sunset, bright and shimmering. “I’ll try to believe in myself. I’ll try to be smart enough to know when I’m being stupid.”

_‘Like you’_ , she didn’t say, but Bess could hear it in the hitch of her breath.

“Good girl,” she said. “And if it doesn’t work right away… well, that’s okay. We all learn by our mistakes, True. You know that better than anyone, I’ll bet.” She smiled, just wide enough for True to see that there was no bitterness left in her, that it was just an observation, nothing more. “Keep trying, and keep learning. You’ll get there.”

“You promise?”

This time, it was Bess who hugged her, quick and hard. “I promise.”

True turned away quickly when she let her go, probably to hide the flash of emotion burning wet in her eyes. Bess saw it anyway, of course, but she knew better than to say anything about it. Besides, what could she say that she hadn’t already? What more could True hear that she hadn’t heard already? That she was forgiven? That she was smart and resourceful? That she was _good_? Bess had told her all those things, had given her everything she needed; it was just a question of time and experience that would see her right. Faith wouldn’t come in a day, not to anyone, but True already had a head-start because she was willing to learn. She was willing to step up and own her mistakes, willing to better herself through them, and if her motives were a little selfish at first… well, she was only human.

As though sensing her thoughts, True swallowed. The sound was heavy, a weighted gulp that rocked the soundless air. “I should get back,” she said, though there was hesitation in her voice. “My dad’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Bess said softly.

It was hard, though. She wanted True to stay, wanted to cling to the one companion she had who understood her, the only person who thought she might be more than what she was. She wanted to keep this moment for herself, this conversation that not even Devon or Morgan could take from her, these few fleeting minutes where for the first time in her life she felt like an equal to someone. It didn’t matter that True was so young, that the only person in the world Bess felt equal to was just a child, because it was _someone_. It was a human being who didn’t think she was less, and for the longest time she’d thought that was more than she’d ever know. She wanted to keep this, just for a little longer, but that would be selfish too, and she didn’t want to be the one reverting back to that.

“I don’t want to,” True confessed, and the sentiment made Bess smile. “But I should. He gets mad when I don’t tell him where I am…”

Bess chuckled, then rose to her feet. “Go on, then,” she said, clapping True on the back, as close to encouragement as she could muster. “Scoot.”

True nodded, then turned and ran off, kicking up dust and not looking back. Bess wondered if it really was because she didn’t want to go, or if she was hoping to hide the moisture in her eyes, like she really thought Bess hadn’t already seen it. In the end, she supposed it didn’t really matter why; she was right to go, and right to go quickly. Her place was by her father’s side, just like Bess’s had been at that age, death and danger and all. It was right, and it was good, and it was how things were supposed to be.

Left alone, she thought. She thought about True, learning at ten years old what Bess had learned from the day she was born. She thought about Morgan, too old to adapt so quickly and too smart to ever accept that he might be stupid. She thought about Devon, blinkered and protective, stubbornly guarding things that didn’t need her nearly as much as she needed them. She thought about Yale, smart enough to know that stupidity wasn’t a crime, and Gaal, speaking in tongues about the difference between ‘smart’ and ‘wise’. She thought about the rest of the group, the way they looked at her and the way they talked to each other.

Most of all, though, she thought about death. Death, who she knew better than any of these people, even her husband. She thought about all the times she’d seen people beg for his touch, all the times it had been less brutal to die than to survive. She thought about that old friend hanging over her shoulder, the old friend she would probably never shake off even if she lived to be a thousand. She thought about the moment of death, the moment where a fading soul felt peace for the first time after days or weeks of suffering; she remembered the sight of tears finally stilling, of screams finally silenced, and of the families left behind to bear the weight of grief and loss and heartbreak. Death was so much harder on the living, she thought, and choked back a sob as she remembered how lifeless Morgan’s face had looked in that dark and lonely tent.

Death had found them here already, and she had no doubt that he would find them here again in due time. They’d all have to find a little faith, something to believe in, something to sustain them when all seemed lost. Bess knew all of that, and she was prepared. Maybe she was the only one of them who was, the only one who truly understood what lay in store for them out among those distant fire-touched rocks, and maybe that was a reason to believe in herself.

Maybe True was right. Maybe she did know more than she thought; maybe there were some things she knew that the others didn’t. She knew Death, at the very least, and she’d held his hand almost more times than she’d held her husband’s. She knew what he looked like, how he thought and felt, how to talk to him; she knew that sometimes dying hurt less than living, and she knew how to take comfort when it happened. She knew how far a prayer could go, how important it was to have those prayers kept adrift by someone else’s voice when the tears drowned her own.

She did know a lot, she realised, and the thought of it resonated inside of her like a crystal refracting the sunset. She had a lot that these station folk could use, if they’d just swallow their pride and accept that sometimes even stupidity could be a little smart.

Her father used to say, _“Death is like an old friend.”_

Well, then. Maybe it was finally time to make some new ones.


End file.
